


Firebird Rising

by ninjalanternshark



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Deaf zuko, Found Family, Gen, HoH Zuko, M/M, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Specifically: no hearing on his left iffy hearing on his right, Trans Character, Trans Zuko (Avatar), Zuko Joins The Gaang Early (Avatar), agender toph, also at one point he bursts his good eardrum so there’s a couple of very quiet chapters, bi sokka, he prefers signing to vocal communication, somewhat more than canon-typical violence but in the same order of magnitude y'know?, the world-saving power of queer friendship, trans author, we're not dismembering people on screen we're just experiencing the consequences of our actions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25365007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjalanternshark/pseuds/ninjalanternshark
Summary: Aang and Iroh stop and meditate for a few minutes before they enter the crystal cave. Zuko’s choices take a turn for the better. (Or: Iroh gets captured by Azula, and Zuko is forced to escape Ba Sing Se with the Gaang.)
Relationships: (the zuko/haru only shows up at the very end), Background Mai/Ty Lee, Haru/Zuko (Avatar), background Katara/Aang, background Sokka/Suki, background bato/hakoda
Comments: 64
Kudos: 562
Collections: A:tla





	1. The Crossroads of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-read by the wonderful @aceprincezuko!  
> This fic (my first ATLA fic!) is 100% complete. Updates will go up on a regular basis.  
> This chapter is about half the length of the rest of the chapters in the fic, which average 8k.  
> The first few lines of this chapter are the only time I left Zuko’s POV writing this fic. They’re mostly there to set up the canon divergence.  
> Agura = sitting cross-legged.  
> Kiza = on knees with the balls of your feet on the ground.  
> Seiza = on knees with tops of feet flat on the ground.  
> When signing ‘honor’ in ASL, using two hands indicates a greater level of respect.  
> The sign for ‘I don’t know’ is a flat hand, palm toward the face with fingertips at the forehead near the temple, moving outward so the palm is facing out. [(Video example.)](https://www.signingsavvy.com/search/i%2Bdon%27t%2Bknow) It is somewhat similar to a knife-hand block motion.  
> When I am describing signed dialogue, I use ‘signed’ and ‘said’ interchangeably. ‘Said’ does not necessarily mean it was vocal. This especially applies to conversations between fluent speakers.
> 
> Mild tw for emetophobia. It’s not described in any detail. If you want to avoid it, skip “In three years at sea” and the following paragraph as well as “Okay, he’d never been seasick” and the paragraph after that.

“Stop,” said General Iroh. Aang, about to push through the last bit of wall, turned to look at him questioningly.

“Sometimes it is best to wait for the right moment. Let us meditate,” Iroh said, sitting in agura on the floor. He set his hands palm-up on his knees, with a flame in each palm.

Aang glanced at the wall. _It could be a trick, but...Toph trusts him. And I trust Toph._

He knelt in seiza and meditated, watching Iroh’s flames rise and fall with his breaths. He pulled some earth up from the ground and tried to imitate the effect.

* * *

“That's not what I mean,” Katara said, and Zuko sort of actually believed her.

“It's okay,” he said. “I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.”

It was his life. His honor. Uncle’s tea shop brought him so much happiness, and Zuko could learn to be happy here, too. Of course, eventually, he’d need to explain to Uncle why he didn’t want to date any of the girls Uncle tried to set him up with, but he could work with that.

“Maybe you could be free of it,” Katara said.

Zuko’s pretty sure he misheard that, because _what?_ “What?” He turned his head slightly to the left, concentrating harder on her voice.

“I have healing abilities.”

“It’s a scar. It can’t be healed, it’s too old for that,” Zuko said.

Katara’s hand went to her pendant. She shifted her weight. “This is water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. It has special properties, so I’ve been saving it for something important.”

She approached him cautiously, still wary. Slowly, she reached up toward his face. For once, he didn’t flinch away from someone trying to touch his scar.

The chill of her hand made him shiver. He couldn’t feel it directly on his scar, but the cold radiated through the entire left half of his face.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked, frowning. “It’s old, but it still burns sometimes.”

He nodded shortly. “Uncle says it may get better with time.”

Katara hesitated again. She took her hand back from his face. He tried not to miss the contact.

Outside of combat, he hadn’t touched anyone except Uncle in so long.

She said, “I’m not sure–”

“You don’t have to help me,” he interrupted. “I’m your enemy. I’ve always been your enemy. Save your moon water.”

There wasn’t as much bite in the words as he had intended, and they didn’t push Katara back like they should have.

She said again, “I’m not sure I can change how it looks on the outside, but if it’s still healing on the inside, maybe I can help.”

 _Azula lies, she always lies,_ whispered the voice in the back of his mind. “Why do you want to help me?” he asked.

Katara frowned. “Because I don’t think that you’re everything you seem to be. What you just said, about choosing your own destiny. You don’t have to be our enemy. And because you’re someone who’s hurt, and I’m a healer.”

“You’re a warrior,” Zuko said, befuddled. “You fight.”

She nodded. “I fight. But waterbenders can heal, too, at least some of us can. I thought you would know that.”

“What would I know that for?”

She shrugged. “Seemed like the kind of thing someone whose people wiped out nearly all of the waterbenders in my tribe would know.”

He flinched. “I don’t.”

“That’s why I offered to help your uncle. Well, I offered because Toph trusts him for some reason. But I could have healed him.”

“We were fine. He’s okay.” Uncle almost hadn’t been. Zuko tried not to think about it. 

“Thank you,” he added, belatedly. “For offering to help him. I didn’t know you were a healer, and I didn’t trust you, but if I had known I might have accepted.”

_This isn’t how the world works. People don’t just help their enemies._

But it was how Katara’s world worked.

Katara uncapped the vial. She pulled the water out, spiraling it with a quick movement of her hand, and sent all but a thimbleful back into the vial.

She raised her hand to Zuko’s cheek, pausing for a moment.

He could have stepped back. He _wanted_ to step back, to go back to the world how it was supposed to be, where Katara was just the enemy waterbender keeping him away from the Avatar and his honor.

He didn’t.

The moon water was cold, but Tui’s light was a reflection of Agni’s. This water had known fire before. It sank into his skin, itching and tingling. His breath caught.

Icy water sank beyond the inner edge of the scar. He shivered.

It was far, far colder than her hand had been. He was tempted to use his fire breath, but something told him that it was a bad idea.

Katara moved her hand, and suddenly his face was on fire with the cold, dozens of poisoned needles pricking him _under his skin_ and it was too much it was like being burned all over again–

He stayed still. He’d stayed still through worse, through debridings and bandage changes and lancings. His breathing steadied as he adjusted to the sensation.

When the rumbling sound started, Zuko was halfway across the cave before he even realized what he was reacting to. With a bang, part of the wall burst out to reveal Uncle – _Uncle!_ – standing next to–

Next to–

They’d taken his dao, but they couldn’t take his bending. He summoned a flame to his hand, drawing back so that he was ready to punch it towards the Avatar.

But the Avatar wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, he was running to Katara.

Zuko froze.

“Nephew!” Uncle said, hurrying towards him. Zuko gave in to the inevitable hug (it was a nice hug, like all of Uncle’s hugs) but he didn’t take his eyes off the Avatar.

The airbender, hugging Katara, glared back at him. Good. Order was restored to the world.

Only it wasn’t.

“Uncle, I don’t understand. What are you doing with _him?_ ” Zuko asked.

“Zuko, I–”

“Saving you, that’s what,” the Avatar said forcefully.

Uncle’s gentle grasp on his arm kept Zuko from walking over to murder the eavesdropping, interrupting little asshole, but it was a near thing.

“Zuko, we need to talk,” Uncle signed. Aloud, he said, “Aang, Katara, go help your friends. We’ll catch up.”

The two of them left the cave, Katara glancing back at Zuko as she went. He couldn’t read the expression on her face. He suspected that she wouldn’t be able to put a name to it, either.

“Sit,” Uncle said, lowering himself to sit in agura. Zuko knelt in kiza, ready to be up at a moment’s notice. Uncle gave him a weary look, but didn’t comment.

“Why, Uncle?” Zuko asked.

“You're not the man you used to be, Zuko,” Uncle said. “You are stronger and wiser and freer than you have ever been. And now you have come to the crossroads of your destiny. It's time for you to choose. It's time for you to choose good.”

“I don’t understand,” Zuko said, shaking his head. “How can I _choose_ good? I’ve been trying to be good enough for my entire life!”

“Being good isn’t about being good enough,” Uncle started. The earth below Zuko vibrated, giving him only an instant’s warning before giant crystals erupted from it to encase Uncle.

“Ah!” Zuko yelped. He turned around, taking in the situation, and put his back to Uncle as Azula and two Dai Li entered the room in the most dramatic fashion possible.

He took a long stance, hands up in a defensive position that could turn into an attack in the space of a heartbeat. The Dai Li stood behind Azula, ready to attack, although Azula herself was standing at rest, hands at her sides.

Azula motioned for the guards to stay back. She walked forward calmly, glancing past Zuko to Uncle and taking in Zuko’s defensive stance.

“I expected this kind of treachery from Uncle. But Zuko – _Prince_ Zuko, you're a lot of things, but you're not a traitor, are you?” she asked.

Zuko lowered his hands slowly. _She’s not attacking me. Can’t trust her, she’s lying. She always lies._

“Release him immediately,” he said.

Azula gave him the _what-are-you-stupid_ look. He hadn’t really expected her to agree, but it was worth a try. He technically outranked her, except for the part where he had been exiled for disrespecting their father and was currently an outlaw in most of the world, including their home.

Okay, she definitely outranked him at this point.

“It's not too late for you, Zuko,” she said softly, forcing him to give her words his full attention. “You can still redeem yourself.”

_Redemption._

His home, his honor, his _family_ back. Even his place as Crown Prince, if he did well.

“The kind of redemption she offers is not for you,” Uncle warned him from behind.

“Why don't you let _him_ decide, Uncle?” she snapped before putting the pleasant facade back on her face. 

“I need you, Zuko. I've plotted every move of this day, this glorious day in Fire Nation history, and the only way we win is together,” she said. “At the end of this day, you will have your honor back. You will have Father's love. You will have everything you want.”

“The Avatar will be captured?” he asked. _I can finish my mission?_

Azula nodded. “On my honor, Agni willing, the Avatar will be captured or killed before sundown.”

She had always been a strategist, pushing little figures around improvised war-maps long before either of them had entered the War Room. If Azula said the Avatar would be captured, then he _would_ be captured.

He couldn’t trust her, but he could trust that.

“Zuko, I am begging you. Look into your heart and see what it is that you truly want,” Uncle said.

“You are free to choose,” Azula said with a smile.

_Look into your heart._

What did Zuko truly want? His honor. The only way to get that back was to capture the Avatar and return to his homeland.

He was nothing without his honor.

(But was he? Was he nothing?)

Azula waved the Dai Li away, watched him for a long moment, and then followed them out of the cave.

Zuko dropped to his knees, catching himself on his hands before folding himself back into seiza.

 _You are free to choose_ , Azula had said, but _you have to choose_ is what she’d meant.

Azula, or the Avatar?

Uncle, or Father?

Azula, cruel and ambitious _._ Azula, whom Zuko had abandoned. Azula, who threw things at turtle-ducks. (Azula, who had spent the last three years with Father as her only family. Azula, who had survived where he couldn’t have.)

The Avatar, the man – the _child_ Zuko had spent three years hunting. The child whose life he had saved, and who had saved his life in return, but also the child who caused destruction and havoc everywhere he went. (The child who was destined to kill the Fire Lord. Kill _Father_.)

Uncle, old and lazy and foolish. Uncle, who had volunteered to go with Zuko in his exile when he could have stayed at home, where it was safe and warm and there were always plenty of teas to choose from. Uncle, who had taken a hit from Azula for him. (Uncle, who trusted the Avatar’s earthbender friend. Uncle, who worked with the Avatar.)

Father, the Fire Lord. Father, who would restore his honor and welcome him back to the palace. Father, who could give him a fresh start as the Crown Prince. (Father, who had sent him into exile to complete a task he knew was impossible. Father, who had burned him.)

He took a moment to realize that the faint, ever-present burning in his scar had lessened. Not by very much, but it hurt less than it had an hour ago.

_Katara’s moon water worked. And she used it on me. She chose to heal me._

“Prince Zuko,” Uncle called aloud.

Zuko turned to look at him.

“I want to tell you something that took me a long time to learn. It is about honor,” Uncle said. He took a deep breath and blew fire into the crystals, splitting them open so he could climb out. He knelt facing Zuko, mirroring him in seiza.

“What is it?” Zuko asked numbly.

“Nobody can take away your honor. It is yours and yours alone. The words of your father do not determine if you are an honorable man,” Uncle said. “If you do what is right, and kind, and just, then you truly have honor.”

He used two hands to sign the last word. _Is that honor more important than the honor I can regain by capturing the Avatar?_

“But what if the right thing is unkind? Or the kind thing is unjust?” Zuko asked.

“Then your honor will show you the way,” Uncle said. “Nephew, answer me this one question. What is it you want?”

“I don’t know!” Zuko said, signing so violently that flames flickered along his fingertips. He picked up a rock and threw it. It burned brightly and fizzled into smoke just before it would have hit the cave wall.

“Think about it. If you were to join Azula and go back to the palace, would you be happy there?”

“Yes! No. I don’t know,” he repeated.

Uncle sighed.

“Prince Zuko, it is time for you to choose your destiny. You know what I would have you choose. You know what Azula would have you choose. It is up to you now. I will wait with you here until you decide.”

Zuko thought. He thought long and hard, until his lower legs went numb. Then he stood, and stretched, and thought more.

He performed his most basic forms without bending, and then moved on to the more advanced ones.

Uncle watched him in silence.

Six counts into his seventh form, there was a shift from positive jin to neutral jin, marked by a three second half-turn. The first month he’d practiced the form, he hadn’t been able to keep his balance during the turn. After two years of practice, it was smooth and confident, the slight crunch of rocks under his feet steadying him instead of throwing him off balance.

It was his best form, and had been since he’d mastered it nearly a year ago. He knew more advanced forms, but he had yet to perfect them.

 _What makes me happy?_ he asked himself as he moved from single mountain into a low sweep.

Before Ba Sing Se, he hadn’t felt happy in a long time. Even when he’d found the Avatar, he’d been too focused to feel anything except anger and determination.

Things that had, historically, made him happy:

_Feeding turtle-ducks with Mother._

_Being trusted by Father to complete important tasks._

_Playing with Mai and Ty Lee, when Azula didn’t want to see them._

_Going to a good production of Love Amongst the Dragons._

_Helping Uncle run the Jasmine Dragon._

It was a short list, he knew. But that made it easier to think about.

Mother was gone. He was too old to play with Mai and Ty Lee. _Love Amongst the Dragons_ was nice, but he couldn’t base his life on theatre.

If Azula kept her hold on Ba Sing Se, Uncle would never see the Jasmine Dragon again, and Zuko probably wouldn’t either. He certainly wouldn’t be working there. But Father might trust him.

Was it worth it? Was the sliver of happiness that he had found here, in the capital of the Earth Kingdom, worth sacrificing for the chance at gaining Father’s approval? It was the most happiness that he could remember feeling since before Mother left.

 _Even if we have to leave Ba Sing Se afterwards, I would have Uncle. We started over once; we can do it again,_ Zuko thought, hardly daring to consider it.

He finished the form and held his last stance.

_I can’t let Azula keep the city._

“Uncle,” Zuko said. “I have to fight her.”

Uncle nodded. “Then there is no time to waste.”

Together they ran into the tunnel Azula’s Dai Li had created. Zuko skidded to a stop when they came to the first fork.

“It connected to the rest of the tunnels,” Zuko said. “Which way?”

He stared at the ground, searching for tracks, but the Dai Li left no trace, and neither did his sister.

Uncle tapped his shoulder, pointed to the left tunnel, and hurried into it.

“How do you know?” Zuko asked, following him.

“It works for paper mazes,” Uncle signed, panting.

Zuko made a sputtering noise of protest, but it was really as good a method as any.

The tunnel continued for a quarter mile without interruption, narrowing steadily. Zuko was starting to think they were going the wrong way.

They shifted to single file, Uncle first. Every few minutes, Uncle stopped to listen. Finally, he motioned for Zuko to stay low and moved through a low gap in the wall.

Zuko followed him, squirming through the gap quickly.

The wall must have been shielding them from the noise of the battle. Below them, in a large cavern, Azula was advancing on Katara and the Avatar, who were throwing blows side-by-side.

_They have no idea how to fight as a team!_

Azula drew for a specialty of hers: a stream of flame so wide it was nearly impossible to dodge.

Zuko slid down the wall, springing off it as he neared the cave floor. He sent his own stream of flame into hers, deflecting it toward the wall, away from the Avatar and Katara.

The battle stopped. Azula’s flame died against the stone wall, harmless. The Avatar and Katara froze where they stood.

She stared at him, eyes blazing with fury. He met her gaze steadily.

She said something he didn’t catch and punched at him. He blocked to the outside, flinching as the heat of her blast singed his tunic.

Things went downhill from there.

Azula knocked the Avatar into the cave wall. He dropped, stunned.

“Hey!” Zuko yelled. “Lala!”

The old nickname had never failed to attract Azula’s attention, and it didn’t now. Snarling, she flipped in Zuko’s direction and threw a low roundhouse kick, forcing him to kneel in a sweeping block to avoid being burned.

She had the high ground, he realized belatedly as she flew toward him. He drew his arms in and punched toward the ceiling, fending off her attack for the moment.

As he looked toward the ceiling, he saw dozens of Dai Li rappelling down from the ceiling to join the fight.

_Oh, shit._

The Dai Li were loyal to Azula. Of course they were. Of _course_ she’d gotten the most powerful militia in the Earth Kingdom on her side.

He wasn’t sure what to do except keep fighting. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Uncle joining Katara, firebending in a fluid style that nearly matched her form – what was that, an octopus?

He worked his way away from the cave wall. Being surrounded by Dai Li was bad, but being surrounded by Dai Li hidden inside of the walls, which he was pretty sure they could do, would be worse.

Azula refocused her attack on Katara and Uncle. The Avatar stood up and tried to send her flying, but not very well.

It did, however, get her attention.

She advanced on the Avatar steadily, grinning. Zuko dodged a metal wire and kicked its owner in the face. The same foot, a second later, snapped back into a flaming hook kick to keep the Dai Li behind him from advancing.

_I can’t keep this up forever._

He jumped as high as he could and reached a pillar. Using it as a springboard, he managed to get himself close to where Katara and Uncle were fighting.

The Avatar, meanwhile, was…hiding in a crystal tent?

“What is he doing?” Zuko yelled at Katara, pointing.

“I don’t know!” she yelled back.

“He’s not helping!”

“Ki-yah!” Katara shouted, lashing out and flattening an entire row of Dai Li. “He’ll come back!”

A minute passed. The Dai Li grew closer. Azula continued to blast the Avatar’s crystal tent with flames.

And then, suddenly, the crystal tent was glowing with more than just heat.

 _Oh, Agni,_ Zuko thought as the crystals splintered. The Avatar in his full form, eyes and arrows glowing, rose. He fought the urge to drop behind the nearest piece of rock, because the Dai Li had paused for now, but they wouldn’t for long, not if–

Azula didn’t even hesitate. She was moving before he even looked at her.

His frantic fire blast didn’t stop her from shooting lightning at the Avatar. Zuko turned his gaze from her, grinning maniacally, to the Avatar, tall and serious and then–

Convulsing.

He fell, and Zuko turned away and tried not to hear–

Nothing. He never hit the ground. When he looked, Katara had made an ice-wave and was bent over the Avatar’s body.

Zuko had led soldiers before, but the _Wani_ wasn’t really a military ship. They hadn’t engaged in conflicts; they’d simply chased rumors. Then there had been the North Pole, and he’d barely survived that himself, and he still had nightmares about the bodies–

_Pull it together, he’s not dead yet. I can’t let Azula win._

He threw another blast at her, but she was prepared. The first one had singed her robes as she’d attacked the Avatar, but this one was met head-on with blue fire. Zuko was forced to block her flames, backing away under the barrage.

He stumbled, and dropped to one knee. _She’s stronger than me._

Until another stream of fire joined his, forcing Azula to dodge away.

“I’ll hold her off,” Uncle said aloud, keeping eye contact with Zuko even as he battled Azula. “Go with them! Find the Earth King and get him to safety!”

“Uncle, no! I won’t leave without you!” Zuko said.

“Go! Protect the Avatar. I will survive,” Uncle said with a half-smile.

“My loyalty is to you, not the Avatar,” Zuko protested.

“Nephew, there is no time to argue. Please,” Uncle said, blasting Azula back a few yards and using the time to sign. “Trust me. We will see each other again.”

The Dai Li had recovered from Katara’s frozen wave and were closing in on Zuko and the Avatar. Azula was stunned for the moment, but she never stayed down long.

Zuko shook his head, hardly believing what was happening. “I’ll come back for you,” he promised. “I swear it on my honor, I will come back for you.”

“I know you will,” Uncle said. “Duck and run. _Now._ ”

Zuko ducked as Uncle forced the Dai Li back with his fire breath. As soon as the air was clear above him, he sprinted for Katara and the Avatar.

Katara looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

“We need to escape,” Zuko said, refusing to acknowledge the Avatar’s still body. “Bend us out. We’ll find your friends and you can heal him. Uncle will hold the Dai Li off.”

She nodded.

In three years at sea, Zuko hadn’t once been seasick. Not during the adjustment period, not during storms, not even during the whirlpool incident.

Katara whipped them up the waterfall so quickly that he very nearly lost his breakfast.

The sky bison was waiting for them on the steps of the palace, along with the Avatar’s other friends, and the Earth King, and a bear.

Not an armadillo-bear. Not a platypus-bear. Just…a bear.

Sokka spotted Zuko and yelped, “Katara, get away from him!”

“I’m helping you!” Zuko said. “The Avatar is injured. She needs to heal him. We have to leave _now._ ”

“Uhh,” Sokka said.

“He’s telling the truth, let’s go! Aang’s really badly hurt, Sokka,” the blind earthbender said.

“Fine,” Sokka said after a moment of glaring at Zuko. “Let’s go. You’re on the back, Fire Prince.”

Zuko climbed onto the sky bison, which had never gotten its saddle back, which meant that–

Okay, he’d never been seasick, but he could no longer claim to have never been airsick.

It was a miserable ride. Sokka stared at him the entire time, apparently not even trusting him enough to let him throw up in peace. Understandable, given their past, but Zuko hated it anyway.

The glow of Katara trying to heal the Avatar lit up the sky bison’s back enough that Zuko, if he strained, could see them.

Eventually, the Avatar started glowing. Katara’s sobs turned into something less desperate. Zuko sighed – _in relief? What the hell, Zuko?_ – and settled down for a long night.

They stopped at the land’s edge to let the Earth King and his bear off, and then continued over the ocean.

Zuko found it oddly soothing to be flying into the darkness. If he just let himself forget that he was almost high enough to reach the clouds, it was like being back on the _Wani_ in the early days.

They flew on into the dark. When the waxing moon came out, the ocean below them sparkled with Agni’s twice-reflected light.

Near moonset, Zuko asked, “Is there a plan?”

Sokka frowned. “I’m not telling you our plan.”

It was hard to hear him over the rush of the wind, but Zuko was used to doing hard things. It wasn’t like he could expect anything different, trying to have an out-loud conversation on the back of an animal that flew faster than the fastest ships.

“I’m not asking. I’m just saying, I don’t think your sky bison can fly forever, and we’re a long way from land,” Zuko said irritably. “Katara may be a waterbender, but the rest of us can drown just fine.”

Sokka scoffed. “I can swim as well as she can.”

“I can’t,” the earthbender said.

“I remember,” Sokka said, cheeks darkening for some reason. Zuko decided he really didn’t want to know what was going on there.

He turned around and curled up as best he could, twisting his hands deep into the bison’s fur and doing a very small fire breath to warm himself up.

“Wake me up when we get wherever we’re going,” he said.

And then he let himself fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the tw: emetophobia lines, 1) Katara waterbends herself, Aang, and Zuko up the waterfall, away from the battle, and 2) They fly away on Appa. Sokka stares at Zuko the entire time, which Zuko considers understandable given their history, if annoying.  
> I thrive on comments! Keysmashing, yelling at me for hurting your fave, memes (apparently you can put pictures in comments now??), ominous and/or optimistic predictions, copying and pasting the line that made you scare your cat…they all spark joy. I’m @agenderzuko on tumblr if you want to yell with/at me in a slightly less formal environment. I love you either way.  
> (also check out @bakodafleetweek !!)


	2. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ika is Japanese for “squid”
> 
> Beta read by @aceprincezuko

Zuko woke up to the unfortunate sensation of being kicked in the shoulder.

“Go away, ‘zula,” he muttered, before realizing that he wasn’t in the Fire Nation palace, and he wasn’t on the _Wani_ , and Uncle wouldn’t kick him, so where–?

Oh.

He was still on the sky bison.

Which, thankfully, was descending in the pre-dawn light. Sokka turned away, his job accomplished, and braced for landing.

Zuko did the same a scant few seconds before the bison crashed to earth, exhausted.

He slid off its back and realized that they weren’t on _earth_ _,_ exactly. He was standing on the wooden deck of a Water Tribe ship.

And there were several well-armed Water Tribe warriors – adult warriors, not teenagers trying to act grown-up – eyeing him with great suspicion.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Zuko. I guess you already know me, sort of.”

“He’s with us, for now,” Sokka said tensely. “Aang’s hurt. We need to get him into a bed so Katara can keep healing him.”

Another warrior walked onto the deck, this one wearing braids and a necklace marking him as the chief.

“Dad!” Sokka said, running to him.

Zuko flinched, but the chief didn’t seem mad. He hugged Sokka, _twice_ , and then hurried to help Katara carry Aang down into the belly of the ship.

Zuko took the moment to take in his surroundings. They were in Chameleon Bay, judging by the mountainous dragon’s head and tail forming the curve of the horizon.

“You know that this bay is going to be full of Fire Nation ships by the time the day’s over, right?” Zuko asked nobody in particular.

The Water Tribe warriors looked even more suspicious.

“Is that a threat?” one of them asked.

“No. My sister conquered Ba Sing Se. She’ll have sent out hawks to call in more troops to officially occupy the city,” Zuko said.

“Your sister,” the warrior said flatly.

“Princess Azula. Crown Princess, now, probably,” Zuko said.

It all seemed like a nightmare. Had he really given up his title, his chance at going home, for Uncle?

What a stupid fucking decision. Regardless, he had to live with it, at least for now. Until he could get back to Uncle and explain to Azula that it had been a misunderstanding and Uncle didn’t _really_ support the Avatar.

He wasn’t sure how he’d convince anyone of that, given that it wasn’t entirely true, but he’d figure it out when he got there.

“You’re the son of the Fire Lord.”

“Who did you _think_ I was? Who are you, anyways?”

“Bato. First mate,” the warrior said after a moment of consideration. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“My sister offered me…it doesn’t matter. Point is, I wanted her to lose and she won and Uncle got captured and now I’m here,” Zuko said.

Bato sighed and waved the rest of the warriors off. He leaned against the railing, studying the horizon. 

“Sokka didn’t kill you on the way over, so that’s a mark in your favor,” he said. “I take it you’re a firebender?”

“Yes.”

“As I’m certain you noticed, this ship is flammable.”

“I noticed,” Zuko said neutrally.

“Don’t set it on fire. If you betray us to the Fire Nation, Hakoda will be perfectly willing to kill you, and so will I,” Bato said. He left Zuko there, standing alone on the deck.

The death threats, he’d been expecting. The trust, not so much.

“Hey! Help me down,” the earthbender called from the bison’s back.

He gave her a hand, and she grunted in displeasure when her bare feet met the wooden deck.

“A boat? Ugh. I can’t see _anything_ here,” she grumbled. “Thanks for the hand, sparky.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want. Give me the tour, I want to know enough to walk around without running into things.”

“Um. Okay,” Zuko said. “This is the deck. It’s about four meters by fifteen. The railing is a meter high. It runs the whole way around. The main mast is centered. It looks about ten meters high. The sails are–”

“Not the tech specs, sparky. I want to know where to _walk,_ ” the earthbender said, annoyed.

“Fine. Let’s go.” Zuko started walking. The earthbender snagged his belt with one hand and followed.

“I never caught your name,” he said.

“Toph Beifong. And you’re Prince Zuko.”

The title stung.

“Yes,” he said, shoving the feeling away.

Agni peered over the horizon, lighting up the ship. Zuko turned to face him, soaking in the sun’s rays.

“What are you doing?” Toph said.

“The sun came up.”

“Ugh. _Firebenders._ All sun-powered and warm. Come on, it’s tour time.”

“Give me a few minutes,” Zuko said, closing his eyes and anchoring himself on the railing with one hand.

Toph obliged for approximately thirty seconds. Then she tugged him away from the railing, surprisingly strong for her height. “Start with the deck layout.”

Zuko walked her over the entire deck, which didn’t take very long. She insisted on being taken belowdecks, which took somewhat longer.

The Water Tribe warriors stared at him in unfriendly ways. Toph, either unaware of or completely immune to the glares, wanted to know the layout of every room, including the toilets, the communal bunkroom, the kitchen, the hold, and the singular office space.

Finally, he left her with Katara and Aang and went back topsides.

The sun was bolder now, less hesitant. The chilly sea air was beginning to warm, but he could feel the start of a breeze.

He sat in seiza and meditated. He would have preferred to summon a flame to focus on, but after Bato’s earlier warning, he didn’t really want to be caught firebending on the ship.

If he was captured on Azula’s orders, he wouldn’t be able to save Uncle. Azula wouldn’t let him. Which meant that he needed to not be captured by the Fire Nation.

The Fire Nation was coming here, to this bay. They would want to fight the Water Tribe fleet. There would be no way to stop them from spotting the fleet. Fighting against them would be slim odds at best, and Zuko didn’t particularly want to risk his life on the sailing merits of people who still depended on the wind for propulsion.

It was probably too late to leave without encountering the navy. They prided themselves on their speed and ability to mobilize effectively.

So he needed a plan. He refolded himself into agura.

An hour of concentration later, he had one. He marched into the chief’s office, ignoring the glares of the warriors.

“Chief,” he said.

The chief looked up from his maps. The office was _full_ of maps. They were tacked to the walls, scrolls of them were stacked in every cubby, and they were currently covering the desk that took up the majority of the floorspace.

“I’m Zuko. Did your son tell you what happened in Ba Sing Se?”

He nodded. “I got the gist of it. He couldn’t tell me much about you.”

An unspoken addition: _so you’d better tell me now._

“You know who I am,” Zuko said first, to clarify. He stood with his hands behind his back to keep himself focused on talking out loud.

“The prince of the Fire Nation. The man who chased my children half the world over to capture the Avatar,” the chief said.

“Yes,” Zuko said. “If I capture the Avatar, I regain my honor. I can go home.”

Something flashed across the chief’s face. He hid it quickly. Zuko kept his own expression neutral.

“I wasn’t chasing him in Ba Sing Se. My Uncle, he opened a tea shop. We were disguised as refugees, but we weren’t doing anything to help my sister. I didn’t even know she was there, or the Avatar, until too late.”

“Sorry,” the chief said. “You said your Uncle. By that, you mean General Iroh, the Dragon of the West?”

“Former general,” Zuko said. “He’s retired. He came with me when I was banished.”

There it was again, that strange look.

“We were invited to the palace to serve tea for the Earth King. But he wasn’t there, Azula was, and I got thrown in a cell, and Katara was there. She offered – it doesn’t matter. She and I didn’t kill each other, is the point. My Uncle and the Avatar rescued us, and they left, and then Azula was there. She said that she would kill the Avatar before the day was done, and I could come back with her. She promised Father would restore my honor,” Zuko said. “I almost believed her. But Uncle would have been thrown in prison, and he’s important to me, I mean _really_ important. I chose him, so I had to fight Azula. And Uncle got caught, but he told me to go with the Avatar. And I trust him, even though he’s ridiculous and gets us into trouble all the time. So I’m here. And I don’t really know why.”

The chief sat in silence for a while.

Okay, Zuko knew he wasn’t the _best_ storyteller, but he hadn’t been that bad, right? His words had been understandable to his own ear, at least.

“So...you’re here because retired General Iroh told you to be here,” he finally said. “Because you chose him over your sister.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” The chief sighed. “You understand that I absolutely cannot trust you.”

“Of course.” He didn’t trust the chief either, except that he kind of had to.

 _Agni_ , he was so fucked.

“Then we’re on the same page. Why are you here now?”

“I have a plan to get us out of the bay without fighting the navy,” Zuko said, realizing as the words left his mouth that the chief would never, ever hear him out, let alone enact his plan. “Also, how should I address you?”

“Hakoda is fine,” he said. “Captain or chief if you want to be formal.” He took out a blank piece of parchment and a pen. “What’s your plan, Prince Zuko?”

“Wait, you’re going to listen?”

Chief-captain Hakoda looked absolutely exhausted. “Yes. The way I see it, you’re on this ship the same as we are, and if you were suicidal enough to go down with it, you would have burned Appa on the flight over.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Zuko told him the plan. Hakoda took notes, making an absurd amount of eye contact for someone who was also writing at least semi-legibly. When he had finished, Hakoda stared at him for a while longer.

“Bato,” Hakoda called loudly, startling Zuko.

The office door opened, and Bato entered. He stood in a casual ready position, hand drifting toward the hilt on his belt.

“Bato, our guest has a plan to get us out of here without a serious fight. I think it can work,” Hakoda said, handing him the paper. “Give it a read over.”

Bato stood and scanned the paper in silence.

“Chief,” he said calmly. “This plan is absolutely insane.”

“Yes,” Hakoda agreed.

“It hinges on him knowing navy procedure and not lying to us about it.”

“Yes.”

Bato watched Zuko for a moment, his gaze steady and cool.

“It’ll work,” he said, handing the paper back to Hakoda. “It gives us better odds than any other plan we’ve been able to come up with.”

Hakoda nodded firmly. “Tell the others. Send a pair by land to signal us; we’ll pick them up on the way.”

“Aye, chief,” Bato said. He turned and left without so much as a bow.

As Zuko was looking back and forth, trying to figure out how disrespectful Bato had been on a scale from _pointedly disinvite him to the next gala_ to _kill him now_ , Hakoda shuffled the maps on his desk and started charting a course into the open sea.

“I’ve noticed that you seem to be having a bit of culture shock,” Hakoda said casually. “I think you’ll find that the Southern Water Tribe is not as formal as you’re used to.”

“Bato left without bowing,” Zuko said.

Hakoda looked up. “Yes, he did. That’s fine.”

“In the Fire Nation, he would have been killed, depending on who he walked out on. If it was a lower-ranking noble, he might have just been socially ostracized instead,” Zuko said. He’d seen worse happen for smaller offenses. “And earlier, Sokka just ran up to you without asking permission.”

“He’s my son. He doesn’t need to ask.”

Zuko tried not to think about what would have happened if _he_ had ever run up to Father without asking. If he’d been older than about three, it would not have been pleasant.

“You have a very strange culture,” he said.

To his surprise, Hakoda seemed to find that very funny. So funny that he didn’t stop laughing for five full minutes. His laughter was bordering on hysterical, actually.

Although he didn’t really think Hakoda was laughing at him, he also didn’t _not_ think that, so he left. He walked back up to the deck, ignoring the Water Tribe warriors, who were continuing their standing tradition of stopping whatever they were doing to stare at him.

It was just past noon. His stomach grumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in well over a full day.

But the deck was warm and bright, so he stayed there.

He passed an hour or so there, watching the bay entrance. Remaining idle wasn’t his habit, but he was in enemy territory, about to be in _worse_ enemy territory. He didn’t want to practice his forms on the wooden ship, and there wouldn’t be a lot else to do until the navy arrived. He shut his eyes and pushed his fist against his forehead. _Agni, everything’s gone wrong. How can my own people be my enemy?_

With a thunk, someone sat down beside him. Zuko flinched, reaching for his dao before he remembered they weren’t there.

It was Sokka. He sat to Zuko’s right, dangling his legs over the side of the ship, and set a plate of food in between them, nudging it toward him.

“Bato said you hadn’t eaten yet,” he said. “He briefed us on your plan.”

He tore a loaf of bread into halves and offered one to Zuko. Zuko took it and bit into it. For a people who didn’t grow grain, the Water Tribe sure knew how to make good bread.

“I still don’t trust you, for the record,” Sokka said. “But it’s a good plan. Also the plan that involves the least amount of danger for your navy.”

He didn’t sound particularly happy about that.

“Would you have me go out of my way to kill my own people?” Zuko snapped.

Sokka hesitated. “No, I guess not. But you’d better stay on our side.”

“Or what? You’ll fight me? We’ve tried that before. I’ll win eventually.”

Sokka scoffed. “Right. Cause you’ve got a great track record there.”

Zuko opened his mouth to tell the asshole exactly what he thought of that, but a bright light flashed across his face and he blinked in confusion.

“Uh,” he said, squinting into the distance. “What was that?”

The light flashed again, from the far side of the bay.

“That’s the signal,” Sokka said. “We have to move! Bato!”

“Got it, Sokka!” Bato hollered from the helm. “Raise the anchor. Atka, Toklo, make sail!”

“Aye, sir!” Sokka and Zuko said at the same time. Zuko looked at Sokka in alarm. They stood and ran for the anchor heist.

Together, they brought the anchor up and stored it. The mainsail snapped open in the wind and the ship started to crawl forward. To their starboard side, the other two Water Tribe ships followed.

As they grew closer to the dragon’s tail on the north end of the bay, their view of the entrance narrowed. Bato maneuvered them into the corner, expertly avoiding boulders.

The scout ship’s bow came into view a scant twenty feet in front of them. As the scouts shouted to each other, raising the orange flag, the Water Tribe ship closed the distance and laid gangplanks with expertise from years of practice.

Tied together, the ships spun. The mountains on the tail were tall enough that the danger flag wasn’t visible to anyone outside the bay, but they would only have a couple minutes to pull this thing off.

Zuko ran across the stern gangplank. A scout came at him, moving too quickly to stop themself when Zuko used their own momentum to throw them overboard.

He flinched at the resultant splash. They were close enough to shore that the scout probably wouldn’t drown, but they’d have to make it out from between the ships first.

The second Water Tribe ship moored itself to the other side of the scout ship, stabilizing it. The point scout on the bow drew a sword, eyeing the Water Tribe warriors, but Zuko cornered them against the railing.

“I won’t hurt you. Give me your helmet and your sword,” he said.

Any self-respecting soldier would have spat at him for suggesting that. Newly recruited scouts weren’t soldiers, though, and this one obliged. _Agni, how young are they?_

“Jump,” Zuko said. “Shore’s ten meters that way. Live to fight another day.”

The scout jumped.

Well, scouts had never really been known for their bravery. Few naval cadets aspired to be scouts, and being appointed to a scouting ship was considered a discreet demotion at best.

Zuko tucked the helmet under his arm and flipped the sword in his hand. _Not bad balance._ Hopefully he wouldn’t need to use it. Trying to fight without killing was a novel requirement for him, one that the Water Tribe warriors were certainly not holding to.

He looked up to see Hakoda watching him. The chief nodded at him, and pointed downward. _Get belowdecks and get ready for part two._

Parts of the deck were slippery with blood – he’d need to rinse it before it rusted. That was the nice thing about iron: it didn’t stain.

Already the fight was dying down as the navy scouts realized they were outmatched. Zuko ran past groups of them surrendering, trying not to care, and went for the hold.

The hold had its own level, in the deepest part of the ship. As he’d expected, they kept their spare uniforms in the same place the _Wani_ had. He stripped off his muted green tunic and put on a too-large uniform. The armor fit marginally better, but it only served to make the entire thing more uncomfortable.

He tucked folds into the sleeves and waistline. _Come on, come on. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just presentable._

Finally, he put the helmet on and folded his tunic, setting it on top of a crate.

He ran up to the deck, passing rooms full of Water Tribe warriors. Bato was waiting for him on the deck. Behind him, the Water Tribe ships were sinking fast. Zuko wondered how long they had been in service. Certainly as long as the _Wani_ , if not longer. Wood was a scarce resource at the poles, and the Southern Water Tribe had to make it last.

“The all-clear flag is hoisted,” Bato said. “Everyone’s on board. I’ve got the helm.”

Zuko nodded. Bato went into the wheelhouse and put on a helmet, making him at least passable at a glance.

He went to the railing and peered over it to see the ship’s name, written in bold characters on its side. _Ika._

The _Ika_ positioned itself by the bay’s western exit, ready to steam further inland, and waited.

Ten minutes later, the other Fire Nation ships reached the bay, and the lead ship pulled alongside them. They extended a single gangplank down to the deck. A lieutenant stepped across, looking across the deck critically.

“Sir,” Zuko greeted. “I’m glad to report that the bay is all clear with no hazards present.”

“Scout, why is your deck empty?” she asked.

He’d forgotten how hard it was to hear people through helmets. _Concentrate! You’ve done this before._ “Ah,” Zuko said, thinking very fast. “The captain is betting his haircut on a game of Pai Sho, sir. The crew wanted to witness it.”

She snorted. “Let us know how that works out for him, huh?”

“Yes, sir. I think Lieutenant Jee is planning on having a sketch done the next time we’re in port.”

“Hopefully soon,” she said. “We could all use some shore leave.”

“Yes, sir. Good luck in there. To the glory of the Fire Nation,” he said.

“To the Fire Nation,” she agreed, bowing. “Fair seas, kid.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She left. Bato took them to port, entering the narrow, cliff-lined waterway.

As soon as the cliffs hid them from sight, Zuko called the all clear. Hakoda was the first one out from belowdecks.

“Well done,” he said, giving him a respectful nod. “Now, let’s pick up our men.”

The watchmen who’d signalled them from the shore were waiting a half-mile to the west, as agreed. They swam out to the ship and were efficiently hauled up by their fellow warriors. The air bison appeared from behind a cloud and landed on deck. Apparently it was smart enough to know when it was safe for it to stay.

With all the crew safely aboard, Hakoda directed Bato to set a course through the Earth Kingdom, aiming for the Middle Sea.

Once he was satisfied that they weren’t going to immediately run into any ships, Zuko went belowdecks. In the hold, Atka and Toklo were arguing over how to read the manifest.

“I’m telling you, _this_ side is starboard,” Atka said. “It’s got star symbols, and the other side has docks, so it’s port.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. “Stars mean bow. The docks mean stern.” He grabbed the manifest and oriented it correctly, setting it down on top of the nearest crate.

“Tui and La,” Toklo said, wide-eyed. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“I’m used to walking in metal ships,” Zuko said. Wearing full armor made walking silently more difficult, but three years of practice had gotten him pretty good at sneaking around on iron. “Are you taking inventory?”

“Yes,” Atka said. “We could use a hand - _ow, Toklo_ \- if you’re free.” Toklo took his foot back from on top of Atka’s, looking slightly guilty about getting caught.

“Sure,” Zuko said. Toklo’s face fell. “I’ll start with the medical supplies.” He jabbed a finger at the map, indicating the far corner, and made his way through the maze of boxes.

It was mostly an exercise in repetition. Zuko knew the standard manifest of medical supplies, and scout ships rarely saw actual combat. Their only mission was to signal other ships in the area of danger. They were largely considered replaceable, were given cruisers older than the _Wani_ , and were rarely aided in battle. Supplying them with the same medical supplies as a battle cruiser was an empty gesture.

He’d learned that from Lieutenant Jee in his second year of exile. He hated it. It felt the same as sending under-prepared cadets into battle as bait.

(The 41st division hadn’t had any survivors. Jee told him that Father had ordered it memorialized; the number was never to be used again as a tribute to their fallen warriors. _For their bravery_ , he’d said, in a way that would have made any other superior officer demote him. Come to think of it, that attitude was probably why he’d been assigned to work under a disgraced exile.)

One of the things the Water Tribe warriors apparently didn’t realize about metal ships was that sound carried extremely well in the enclosed spaces. Sure, the hold was full of wooden crates, but there was headspace above them.

So when Toklo and Atka started discussing their thoughts on Zuko’s true loyalties, he could hear them. He suspected if his hearing were better, he would be able to catch every word; as it was, he still understood about half.

 _One full crate clean bandage-cloths,_ he wrote. _Plus misc. infirmary supplies._

In the background, Toklo said something about Zuko being a prince and a firebender.

_Three quarters crate various medicines and dried herbs._

Zuko made a mental note to investigate that crate further at a later date, since he’d left his own medicines behind in Ba Sing Se. Usually, they went everywhere with him, but it had only been a couple hours’ trip to serve tea to the Earth King – or so he and Uncle had thought.

“...says he’s on our side,” Atka said particularly loudly. After another second: “It’s _Bato,_ of course I–”

Zuko sighed. “I am _not_ on your side,” he called, trusting the metal walls to carry his voice. “I’m here because I have to save my Uncle. Not to help you, and not to help the Avatar.”

“See? _Not on our side,_ ” Toklo said triumphantly. A second later, an _oomph_ and a _clang_ implied that Atka had shoved him.

 _I’ve been here less than a day and I’m already causing fights. Great,_ Zuko thought, counting out the crates of spare uniforms and armor. He dug out a uniform that would fit him better than the one he was currently wearing, as well as the Earth Kingdom tunic he’d stowed earlier.

He considered them both for a minute. _If we run into another Fire Nation ship, I want to be ready to face them. But we should have a bit of warning._

In the meantime, he’d rather wear the tunic. He changed into it quickly, somewhat wary of one of the others walking into his corner of the hold. The sleeveless tunic was a relief, after the uniform that he’d had to fold above his elbows to keep his hands available.

He worked his way through inventorying the port half of the hold before he remembered that he had eaten a chunk of bread and nothing else in the last 24 hours and decided that he was allowed to raid the galley, since he was technically the highest-ranking Fire Nation official aboard.

As he wound his way through the maze of crates toward the ladder out of the hold, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Toklo shoving Atka against the wall.

 _Are they really still fighting?_ Zuko decided to ignore them, since his input clearly hadn’t resolved their argument. He climbed out of the hold and walked into the galley.

Sokka and Toph were there, arguing about how much to salt the rice.

“A pinch,” Sokka was saying. “No more. A pinch is _all it needs._ ”

“That’s going to be very sad rice,” Zuko said. Sokka jumped, startled. Toph didn’t.

“Why would it be sad rice, dubiously evil flame man?” Sokka said. “Okay, that was bad. I acknowledge that that was a bad nickname. Hold on, I’ve got another.”

He took a breath, presumably in preparation for giving Zuko an equally terrible nickname. Toph elbowed him.

“ _I_ do the nicknames, snoozles. Why’s it going to be sad, sparky?”

“Because Sokka got distracted arguing about how much salt to put in and didn’t see it boiling over.”

“Noooooooo,” Sokka wailed, taking the pot off the heat and glaring at the stove. “Stupid Fire Nation stove!”

“It’s very efficient,” Zuko said. “It uses passive heating from the boiler.”

“Ugh,” Toph said. “You know a _ridiculous_ amount about this ship.”

“It’s similar to the _Wani_.”

“That’s the ship you chased us from pole to pole in, right?” Sokka said, setting the lid back onto the pot.

“It was my home for three years,” Zuko said.

Toph looked queasy. “You lived on a ship? That sounds terrible!”

“It was fine.”

The _Wani_ had been crowded, and dirty, and usually broken in one way or another, but Uncle had been there. And the crew had eventually grown indifferent, if not exactly friendly, toward him. He’d kind of been an asshole to them the first couple of years.

Most of them were probably dead now.

“Plenty of people live on ships, Toph,” Sokka said. “My dad and his crew have done it for the last three years, too.”

Toph shuddered. “I’d die. This ship is better, at least. I can sort of see, even if it’s not as good as real earth.”

“You can see through the iron?” Zuko asked.

“It has earth in it. It’s enough to navigate by. And enough to lie-detect, if I’m close enough,” she said, grinning in a way that reminded him, rather unfortunately, of Azula.

He shook the feeling off. _Uncle trusts her. He would know if she was like Azula._

“Do you want to hear how Aang’s doing?” Sokka asked him. “Or are you still intending on catching him as soon as you’re off my dad’s ship?”

Zuko hesitated. “Um. I don’t think I am. I have to free my Uncle.”

“Yeah, we know,” Toph said. “After that, what’re you going to do, though?”

“I don’t know,” Zuko said. “I don’t have a plan after that.”

That seemed to surprise Sokka. He was staring at Zuko, his expression approaching...concern?

“You’ve really changed,” he said. “What happened to you?”

“Lots of things. The rice is boiling over again.”

Sokka said some things Zuko was pretty sure he wouldn’t repeat in front of Hakoda or Katara and held the rice pot in front of him sadly. “I think I killed it. It’s not going to get any better than this unless we start over.”

“I’m too hungry to start over,” Toph said. “It can’t be worse than the swamp food.”

“True,” Sokka acknowledged. “Wait, you weren’t even there!”

“Katara told me _everything,_ ” Toph said imperiously. “Even the frogs.”

Sokka sputtered indignantly. “No!”

The…frogs? Zuko remembered something about frogs, but frankly, he’d thought the Avatar had been concussed, or possibly hallucinating.

“Yes,” Toph said. She held out her bowl. “Rice me.”

Sokka spooned a dollop of sad rice-goop into her bowl. “Zuko, you want rice?”

“No, thanks. I’ll make my own,” he said.

“Is my rice not good enough for you?”

“You don’t have to feed me. I can make my own,” Zuko repeated.

“Whatever,” Sokka said, taking a bite. “Okay, you’re right, this is sad. It’s….”

“Crunchy, yet mushy,” Toph said, eating hers with a pensive look. “And not salty enough.”

“The salt is fine!” Sokka argued. “It’s the rest of it that went wrong. Whatever, Katara will probably eat it anyway. Let’s go. She’s still healing Aang, by the way,” he added, looking at Zuko. “She’s going as fast as his body can take, and she’s still afraid it won’t be enough.”

Zuko nodded.

They left.

He made a bowl of rice for himself. It didn’t boil over, and it was perfectly seasoned, and it tasted like a lost opportunity.

* * *

On their sixth day aboard the _Ika_ , Zuko was asked to bring a new jar of burn salve to sickbay. He found a jar quickly and, finding himself comfortably alone in the hold, took a few minutes to sit down and dig through the rest of the medicine crate. Although he found a wide variety of medications, the one he needed wasn’t there.

He dropped the burn salve off with Katara, who hadn’t left the sickbay since they’d arrived. She didn’t thank him out loud, but she nodded tiredly, and he understood.

He paced around the ship’s hallways, and then up on the deck. They’d encountered a few Fire Nation ships, but they had always been able to see them coming; Bato had set up a rotating watch up in the raven-eagle’s nest. Everyone on deck just put on a Fire Nation uniform at the start of their shift; it was easier that way.

He squinted up at the nest. Hakoda was standing watch. (Another strange thing about the Southern Water Tribe: the captain took watch shifts like everyone else.) Zuko climbed the ladder and waited for Hakoda to finish his scope of the horizon before pulling himself into the nest.

“I don’t think my shift ends for another hour, Prince Zuko,” Hakoda said, eyeing him. “And you’re out of uniform.”

“I’m not here for watch. May I speak with you?” he asked.

“You already are.”

Zuko waited for an actual answer. Hakoda sighed. “Go ahead.”

“I take a certain medication,” Zuko said. He’d thought about this speech carefully, how to tell _enough_ without _too much_. “It isn’t carried on board most ships, but it’s necessary for me. I would like your permission to take a rowboat to shore to get it. I can pay for it myself.”

“We’re twenty miles from the nearest town,” Hakoda said. Zuko shrugged. “What medicine is it? We might be able to find a substitute.”

“Um,” Zuko said. He rattled off the list of ingredients. He’d seen Uncle order it at enough apothecaries to have it pretty well memorized.

Hakoda frowned. “I know that formula.”

 _What in Agni’s name are the odds of him recognizing that?_ The universe hated him. It was the only explanation for his entire fucking life.

“It’s medicine,” Zuko said, realizing as the words came out of his mouth that they were completely unhelpful.

“Bato uses the same one,” Hakoda said, realization dawning on his face. “It’s taken weekly, correct?”

Zuko made himself nod, twisting his hands together behind his back to keep them from trembling. _He’s going to kick me off the ship. I’m going to have to swim to shore, at least it’s daylight so I should be strong enough–_

“Prince Zuko,” Hakoda said, sounding concerned. “Sit down, please.”

He knelt in seiza, keeping his hands behind him. He stared at the deck. Hakoda sat in agura.

“Prince Zuko, I’m getting the impression that…that taking this medication is not accepted in the Fire Nation. I don’t need to know about that, but I’m not going to let you go into harbor alone, and I think you understand why,” Hakoda said.

 _Because I could alert the Fire Nation navy to the presence of a rogue scout ship, and they would obliterate his entire crew,_ Zuko thought. _Would I do that, if he let me go?_

He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of a lot of things, these days. (He should have accepted Azula’s offer. At least then, he would have had someone to tell him what he was supposed to do.)

“I’ll send you with Bato. We’re running low on a few other things. I’m assuming that this hasn’t come up with my children or the Avatar’s other companions?” Hakoda asked.

Zuko shook his head. Zhao’s cutting _speak out loud, boy_ echoed in his memories _._ “No, sir.”

“Then I won’t mention it,” Hakoda said. “Bato will let you know when he’s ready to leave. We’ll find somewhere out of sight to moor. In the meantime, there’s a safe in the captain’s quarters that looks like it takes a firebender to open.”

It was an easy safe to crack: theft wasn’t much of a problem aboard navy vessels, as it was punishable by execution. The only thing he had to do was push a flame inside the lock. Zuko took an oilcloth bag with enough coins to pay for everything they needed.

By the time the sun was at its peak, the _Ika_ had moored behind some rock pillars a half-mile west of a harbor town. Zuko waited on the deck, impatient, until Bato came and found him.

“Let’s go,” Bato said. “I want to be back before sundown.”

They had taken to sailing without lights at night. As a result, the interior rooms without hatches had gotten quite popular for socializing, since those were the only ones allowed to have candles lit. Zuko usually took the time to practice his forms, without bending, on the stern deck, where nobody could see him.

It would be difficult to navigate back to the ship in the dark. Zuko could understand why Bato wanted to avoid it.

“Okay,” he said. He and Bato got into the rowboat and lowered it into the water. Zuko sat in the stern and started rowing as soon as they pushed away from the _Ika._

From behind him, Bato said something. Zuko barely heard him; he turned to the right so he could see Bato’s face.

“What?” he said.

“Don’t row like that,” Bato repeated.

“How should I?”

“Watch the angle of my oar when it enters and leaves the water.”

Zuko watched and imitated him until Bato nodded, satisfied. They fell into a rhythm, Zuko keeping time by the just-visible splash of Bato’s oars leaving the water.

They made good time, entering the harbor in less than an hour. Although it looked like a small town, they were doing good business on the docks, despite the three docked navy cruisers looming over the plethora of smaller boats.

Bato tied off the rowboat. Zuko paid off the dock attendant (with a tip, it wasn’t his money and they had plenty so _why shouldn’t he_ and why was Bato looking at him like that–) and they made their way into the marketplace. It was bustling with activity, sailors and locals mingling. A kid waving a kite ran by them, seeming not to have a care in the world. _Do you know what your world is going to change into?_

“There’s an apothecary,” Bato said, pointing at a little shop with dark windows. “I’ll be over at the fabric stand.”

Zuko took a handful of coins from the bag, pocketed them, and handed the rest over to Bato. “I won’t be long.”

He walked into the shop. It was quiet inside, and he blinked in the dim light. There was a tank full of large elbow leeches, shelves full of all sorts of medicines, and a small child sitting on the counter.

“Hello,” Zuko said.

“Help you?” the kid said, blinking at him.

“Um. Yeah. I’m here to buy a medicine and the stuff I need to administer it,” Zuko said. “I have a list of the ingredients.”

“You want my da,” the kid said. “I’ll get him.”

They disappeared into the back of the shop. Zuko kept a wary eye on the leech tank. The leeches seemed to be watching him. It was eerie, considering he was pretty sure they didn’t have eyes.

“Welcome,” said a thankfully more adult voice. Zuko turned to see a middle-aged man leaning on the counter. “I’m told you’re here for me?”

“You’re the herbalist? Or, apothecary-person? Sorry, I don’t know the word,” he said.

“Also the apothecary. The apothecary runs the apothecary,” the man said with an easy grin. “I’m Jai. What can I do for you?”

Zuko handed him the slip of paper he’d written the ingredients down on. “I need this compound mixed.”

He glanced at the list. “Sure thing. Do you need the administrator?”

“Yes, please. A reusable one.”

He nodded. “You’re familiar with how to sterilize it?”

“Yes. I’ve used one before,” Zuko said. “I had to leave it behind.”

Jai took down some ingredients, weighed them out, and put them in a mortar to grind. As he worked, he said, “You’re a refugee, then?”

“Sort of. I’m just passing through,” he said. “I used to live in Ba Sing Se.”

“Oh, you’re a city boy then? Must be a change, being around here,” Jai said. He poured the ingredients into a beaker, added oil, and set it over a small flame. “Where are you headed, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I need to find my Uncle. He was taken prisoner,” Zuko said.

Jai looked up sympathetically. “I hope for both your sakes you’re successful. The Fire Nation doesn’t treat prisoners well.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to free him.”

Jai nodded. “I believe that.” The oil started to bubble. He raised the height of the beaker, distancing it from the flame.

“How long does it take to finish?” Zuko asked, feeling rather uncomfortable with the conversation.

“About an hour. You can come back once you’ve finished your other shopping, if you’d like.”

“Yes, thank you,” Zuko said. “Do you want me to pay now?”

“No need. You can pay when you pick it up. It’s easier to keep track of, that way,” Jai said.

Zuko left the shop, squinting in the bright light of the marketplace. He found Bato haggling over the price of fabric. He’d picked out several bolts in neutral Earth Nation colors.

Once Bato had negotiated the price down, he paid and turned, starting when he saw Zuko.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to see how bad you are at bartering. I’m supposed to pick the medicine up in an hour. What else do we need to buy?” he asked.

They wandered the market, picking up odds and ends. Bato did all of the bartering, even though Zuko was pretty sure he’d be better at it than he was. Still, it was nice not having to focus on what was being said. The ambient noise in the marketplace was actually sort of fun to listen to, when he didn’t have to parse it out into words.

The trip passed quickly. Once they’d gotten everything they needed, they went back to the apothecary. Bato followed Zuko in.

Jai was at the counter. He greeted them with a smile, gaze lingering curiously on Bato’s Water Tribe tunic for a moment.

“How much?” Zuko asked. Jai told him the price and he counted out the coins needed.

“Here you are, sir,” Jai said, handing him a small wooden box. “Safe travels.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You too. Well, not safe travels, I mean, unless you’re travelling. But stay safe.”

With their collection of goods, rowing back to the ship took longer than getting into harbor had. By the time they reached the _Ika_ , Zuko’s hands were blistering even through his callouses.

He helped Bato unload the goods as the _Ika_ cast off, picking up speed quickly as they sailed west.

“What’s the cloth for?” Zuko asked as they stowed it in the hold. “It’s not the right color for making Fire Nation uniforms.”

“We’d like to be able to pass as Earth Kingdom civilians. It’s useful for harbors. We’ve got quite a way to go before we enter the Fire Nation proper,” Bato said.

Bato had stood out like a flutter-bat in a flock of turtle-ducks in the Earth Kingdom harbor, so that made sense to Zuko.

He spent most of the evening meticulously organizing the hold to navy standards. After it got dark and most of the crew was asleep, he practiced his forms there, allowing himself to firebend for the first time in nearly a week.

His flames were as strong as they’d ever been. Some part of him had been worried he wouldn’t be able to make them appear, not after what he’d done. But even traitors could firebend, and he was too relieved to consider it further.

It had been a few days since he’d slept, so he curled up in a corner of the hold for the night.

* * *

“Prince Zuko!”

“Who’s there?” Zuko half-shouted, snapping to his feet and immediately swaying with dizziness. It wasn’t even dawn. It _couldn’t_ be dawn, because Zuko would have woken up already. But a shout loud enough to wake him up, through the hold door (because whoever had yelled that clearly wasn’t in the hold), meant that something had gone very wrong.

He considered yelling back, discarded the idea, and climbed out of the hold.

Toklo spotted him almost immediately. “I’ll tell Bato you’re awake. Suit up, there’s a ship on the horizon and he wants you on deck.”

Zuko nodded and dropped back into the hold, sighing. He took off his tunic and replaced it with the Fire Nation uniform he’d found. It _almost_ fit, and it was close enough that it stood up to scrutiny, but it didn’t feel right.

Possibly because it was a women’s uniform, which he was trying not to think about. The Fire Nation rarely had to deal with recruits as small as Zuko, mostly because recruits tended to be fully grown adults, so he had to take what he could get.

 _It’s a Fire Nation uniform, that’s all that matters_ , he told himself. _Anyways, it’s virtually identical to the men’s uniform._ _Get moving._

He put on his armor and headed up to the deck. As he’d thought, it wasn’t yet dawn. The horizon was just starting to lighten behind the clouds; it wasn’t going to be a bright day.

They’d entered a much wider part of the passage. Most of the horizon was water as far as Zuko could see. The ship on the south-eastern horizon was drawing nearer. Bato had evidently been standing watch; he slid down the ladder and landed with a thump.

“It’s a single cruiser,” Bato reported. “Standard size, so larger than us. Could you take care of it?”

Zuko nodded. “Sure. Put someone in uniform up in the raven-eagle’s nest, one in the wheelhouse, and four additional on deck. And someone needs to cover up the air bison.”

Bato stared at him. Zuko suddenly remembered that, as a pseudo-prisoner-slash-declared-enemy, he was not really supposed to be giving orders.

“Um. If you want to,” he added, too late. “Sir.”

Bato snorted. “Yeah, okay. Toklo! You heard the man, get moving.”

“Aye, sir,” Toklo said.

“Six on deck is standard naval procedure for a scout ship,” Zuko said. “Last time they questioned why I was the only one visible.”

“Good to know,” Bato said. “We’ve got a couple minutes before they can see us clearly. Where should they be?”

“Whoever’s in the raven-eagle’s nest should be standing at attention, scanning the horizon every few minutes. The wheelhouse officer will just stay there. The four on deck should be one to port, one to starboard, and two to stern. I’ll be at the bow,” Zuko said. “Bring us in nice and slow. Start flying the all-clear now.”

He stood at the bow, facing into the wind. The sky turned a few shades lighter, and several shades redder.

 _Well, that’s not great,_ he thought, but then again if the weather was their worst problem, then they were probably doing okay.

They slowed to dock with the larger cruiser, and a captain disembarked, followed closely by two lieutenants.

“Sir,” Zuko said, standing at attention.

“As you were, scout,” the captain said. “I’m Captain Lira. These are Lieutenants Turo and Ma.”

“Scout Lieutenant Li, sir. We’re honored by your presence.”

“What’s your heading, Lieutenant?” Lira asked sharply. “All active Western fleet ships have been ordered to Ba Sing Se.”

“Sir, we’ve been ordered to return to the capital to aid the second wave of supply ships,” he said. “The supply fleet has requested additional security to avoid Earth Kingdom raids.”

“Pah. Cowards,” Lira said lightly. “Lieutenant, are you stopping at the capital?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have two prisoners onboard who were slated for the Capital City Prison. Obviously we’ve been redirected. Do you have the capacity to take them on? They’re nonbenders, of course. Nothing too dangerous,” she said.

“Sir, I’ll have to check with the officer on deck,” Zuko said, panicking. “I believe we have room in the brig. Permission to-”

“Granted,” Lira said.

Zuko went for the wheelhouse, keeping his stride military sharp. He stood in the doorway for a minute, saluted, and went in without asking. “Bato, they want us to take two prisoners. Clear out the brig, _fast_ , but act casual. Come back with the stern guards.”

Without waiting for a response, he left the wheelhouse and walked back to Lira.

“Sir, Officer-on-deck Bao says we can take them on. He’s just gone to let the guards know.”

“Excellent,” Lira said. She snapped her fingers, and one of the Lieutenants left. “We’d keep them ourselves, but frankly they’re a waste of food.”

A minute later, Bato came back on deck, Sokka and Toklo in tow. They did a poor job of imitating Zuko’s military walking style. He cringed a little bit.

“New recruits, Lieutenant?” Lira said quietly to him, apparently amused.

“Yes, sir,” Zuko said. “They’ll settle down soon enough.”

“They always do. Privates! Escort these men to the brig,” Lira said, gesturing at the prisoners her Lieutenants were bringing down the ramp.

“Yes, sir! Uh, ma’am,” Sokka said.

Lira started to turn all _sorts_ of angry colors. Zuko looked at Bato and, as subtly as he could manage, jerked his shoulder toward Lira. _Come on, come on! You’re the ranking officer here, and I can’t speak before you._

Bato got the message. “Captain, I formally apologize for Private Oma’s poor conduct,” Bato said, bowing deeper than was strictly necessary. “He will be disciplined accordingly and _educated_ until he recognizes his mistake.”

It was a clumsy attempt at a deescalation, but it worked. Lira calmed down enough to nod at Bato. “Make _certain_ of it, Officer Bao. If we weren’t in such a hurry to reach Ba Sing Se, I would do it myself.”

Bato nodded firmly. “Yes, sir.”

Sokka and Toklo managed to do a convincing job escorting the prisoners belowdecks, and once Bato left, Zuko quickly wrapped up the conversation with Lira. He watched her ship depart, and slumped to the deck in a moment of relief.

The moment the larger cruiser was out of sight, Sokka, Toklo, Bato, and the prisoners hurried back up on deck.

Zuko stood back up. “Hey! Water Tribe,” he snapped at Sokka. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t even know what I did!” Sokka protested.

“Oh, you don’t? You disrespected the captain of that ship, is what you did,” Zuko said, somewhat aware that his voice was starting to slip into unrecognizability. He took a breath and focused. “In the Fire Nation, officers higher-ranking than yourself are addressed as _sir._ It doesn’t matter what their gender is. She could have challenged you to an Agni Kai for that.”

“That’s really weird,” Toklo muttered.

“It’s not. It’s _standard._ You’d better get used to it, if you want to survive here,” Zuko said.

“Zuko,” Bato said. “Give them a break. It won’t happen again.”

“That was too close,” the smaller of the two prisoners said. “Sokka, you’re lucky that Zu…ko. _Zuko?_ Prince Zuko?”

Sokka nodded. “It’s okay, The Duke. He’s with us right now. Zuko, these are two of Jet’s former, uh, compatriots? Pipsqueak and The Duke.”

“Hello,” Zuko said. “I’m Zuko. You and Jet did your level best to murder an entire village, and they’ll be lucky if they don’t starve next year.”

Pipsqueak looked ashamed. “That was wrong. Jet convinced us it was right, but he went too far.”

“Katara and Aang saved them,” The Duke added. “We’re with Aang now, if he’ll have us.”

“We’re glad to have any allies we can get right now,” Bato said, clapping Pipsqueak on the back. “Welcome to the _Ika._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko, catching a glimpse of Toklo pinning Atka’s hands above his head with one hand and cupping Atka’s face with the other: wow they must be fighting :-/  
> Zuko greatly overestimates his own ability to barter effectively.  
> The medicine Zuko takes is essentially weekly HRT shots (testosterone). I don’t intend to include specifics about him doing his shots in this story. (Additional note: very little information about historical testosterone HRT is known. I can’t actually find a good source on whether or not it existed anywhere at any point in time prior to the industrial revolution. I believe that some form of it existed, because humans are curious, inventive creatures and trans folks have been around the entire time, but again, I can’t find a source because I don’t think it’s well-studied. However, I have made the executive decision that it exists in ATLA and is relatively easy for apothecaries to manufacture.)  
> If you would like So Much More of Hakoda & co. reluctantly adopting Zuko, go read/reread Salvage by muffinlance. (Her fic also has a Water Tribe warrior named Toklo! There may have been some subconscious influence/name recognition on my end, but they’re not the same character. Mine’s mostly just here to make out with Atka.)


	3. The Awakening | The Headband

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for concussion and subsequent (non-permanent) hearing loss  
> The signs Zuko uses to talk with Bato (and the Gaang) are not actual signs because Bato doesn’t speak ASL, which I have arbitrarily decided is the mostly-universal sign language of the ATLA world.  
> Half stance: shortened L-stance with ~95% of weight on back leg. Usually called a cat stance.  
> Beta read by @aceprincezuko

By the third week, the crew had started to relax more around Zuko. He was consistently invited to music night, story night, special-food-night (what even was that?), and bending demonstration night (which was actually just a Toph demonstration night). He declined all of the invitations just as consistently, instead spending his time as alone as he could get on a ship of the _Ika_ ’s size.

He’d gotten pretty good at finding his own space on the _Wani_ , but he’d had his own room there and that had definitely helped.

As they wound their way further from Ba Sing Se, into the open ocean and Fire Nation waters, they encountered more navy ships.

One cloudy afternoon, as Zuko was standing watch from the raven-eagle’s nest, something changed. He could feel it lingering in the air, like a static charge.

When the Avatar burst onto the deck, still looking half-dead and definitely not in control of his limbs, Zuko called, “Hakoda! Bato!”

The two men turned from where they were standing, talking and petting the flighty little lemur-thing that followed the Avatar around. (It had a name, he was certain, but nobody had told him and besides that, he really didn’t need to know.) Toph and Katara, standing at the starboard railing, quickly realized what had happened and ran over.

Zuko couldn’t hear their conversation from his post, but he quickly dropped the notion of abandoning his watch. _It’s not like he’d want to see me, anyway._

A minute later, when he looked again, they’d all gone belowdecks. The air bison was sticking its head into the hallway. He could just barely hear it lowing plaintively.

Iluq climbed into the raven-eagle’s nest. “Hey. Shift’s over. Aang woke up, by the way.”

“I saw,” Zuko said. “I haven’t seen any ships. There’s a storm to our north, but we should be okay as long as we stay on course.”

He nodded. Zuko climbed down and, making sure Iluq wasn’t watching, walked over to the air bison.

“Hi,” he said, letting himself sign along with the spoken words for the first time in weeks. “I’m Zuko. You probably know me. Your name’s Appa, right?”

The bison looked at him. It made a quiet grumbling noise.

“Yeah. We’ve got history, I know. But the Avatar will be okay. Katara is a healer,” he said, feeling pretty ridiculous but not able to stop himself. “I’ll make sure he knows you want to see him.”

The bison sat back and actually _nodded_ at Zuko, which was definitely something that Zuko needed to consider at a later date. It moved back and let him pass freely. _Just how smart are air bison supposed to be?_

He found Sokka lurking outside of sickbay, leaning against the wall. Zuko decided that the diplomatic thing to do would be to ignore the drying tear tracks on his face.

“Can we talk?” Zuko said. Sokka nodded and followed him down into the hold, shutting the door behind himself without having to be asked.

Sokka sat down on a crate. Zuko stood, trying not to pace, hands tight at his sides. “I don’t know if I can be here,” he said. “I don’t – they all think I’m a traitor already. I had one job, and that was to capture the Avatar and bring him to the Fire Lord. It was one thing when he was in a coma, but he’s awake now. How can I betray everything I believe in? Uncle told me to go with you, but he’s not here, and I want to go _home_ someday and if I stay here I might not be able to, _ever_ –”

“Zuko,” Sokka said, cutting him off. “Slow down a second.”

Zuko stopped talking.

“Okay,” Sokka said. “You’re having an existential crisis. I’m going to start asking questions now. Why did you help Aang and Katara instead of Azula?”

“She offered me a choice. Uncle asked me to think about what I really wanted. What made me happy,” Zuko said. “And the answer was living with him in Ba Sing Se. We were okay there. And Azula was going to take the city. She did take the city.”

“I talked with Uncle, I mean General Iroh, in Ba Sing Se. He was very wise,” Sokka said. _That must have been when Uncle decided to team up with the Avatar._ Zuko pushed away the sting of betrayal. _I trust Uncle._ “Why do you think he told you to come with us?”

“I don’t know! He’s impossible to understand,” Zuko said, frustrated. “He talks in metaphors all the time, and they’re not even good metaphors. But when it was time to choose, I chose him.”

Sokk nodded. “What do you think happened to Ba Sing Se after we left?”

“Military occupation. A lot of chaos, without their king to guide them. Probably looting and riots, maybe rebellion,” Zuko said. “It wouldn’t have lasted long, not against Azula and the navy.”

The people there had been nice, for the most part. They’d liked Uncle’s tea so much that the Jasmine Dragon had become the most popular tea shop in the Upper Ring within days of opening.

Even the girl Uncle had forced him into a date with (he was going to have to have a conversation about that with Uncle, once he rescued him) had been kind to him.

They didn’t deserve what was happening to them.

“I wish she’d never found out any of us were in the city,” Zuko said. “I wish I’d been strong enough to stop her.”

“If the Avatar and the Dragon of the West couldn’t take her, then no offense, buddy, but you didn’t stand a chance,” Sokka said.

 _Azula always was a prodigy._ But the battle hadn’t been fair. In an Agni Kai, Uncle would win. (He’d probably even win without hurting her too badly, because Uncle was sentimental like that.)

“Do you still want that?” Sokka asked.

“Want – what?”

“Do you still want to, I don’t know, live a quiet life with Uncle in a tea shop?” he asked. “Gotta admit, it’s hard to picture, but you do you.”

“I need to get Uncle back first. I can figure the rest out later,” Zuko said.

“Okay. So where will you find him?”

“Capital City Prison or Boiling Rock,” Zuko said. “Probably Capital City. He doesn’t hold a lot of political importance outside of the palace, at least not that Father and Azula know of.”

“What a coincidence,” Sokka said. “We’re on our way to Capital City for the solar eclipse. Stick with us, and we can get you there. After that, you and Uncle can leave, and neither of us will bother the other again.”

He stuck his hand out.

_Can I do that? Can I swear to never chase the Avatar again?_

“Deal,” Zuko said, shaking. _I can. For Uncle._

Someone banged on the hold door. “Sokka! Aang’s coming back around,” Toph hollered.

“I’ll let the others know,” Sokka said to Zuko. “Coming, Toph! Zuko, you should come see Aang.”

“I don’t think he’ll want to see me,” Zuko said. “Once he’s recovered, he can find me if he wants to. It’s a small ship. And, um, I think the bison was sad that he had to go back inside.”

Sokka nodded and left the hold, leaving Zuko alone again.

Or, apparently, not.

“How long have you been hiding there?” Zuko asked.

Toklo popped up from behind a nearby crate. “The entire time. Sorry, we didn’t want to interrupt, you seemed like you were having a really productive conversation.”

“So you’re officially with us until the eclipse,” Atka said, standing up beside Toklo. “Good. In that case, I think music and story nights just became mandatory. I’ll tell Bato to expect you tomorrow night.”

“Uh,” Zuko said, casting about for an excuse and finding none. “Sure. Sounds great.”

He left them in the hold and went back up to the deck. It was daylight and there were people around, so he didn’t want to practice his forms, but he could at least meditate.

It would be nicer if the sun were out, but the overcast clouds didn’t look like they were going to let up anytime soon. He summoned a palm-sized flame and focused on it, sitting in agura with his back to the wall, facing into the wind.

When he was ready, he let the flame slip from his hand. It danced a hand’s breadth above the iron plating of the deck, shrinking and growing with every breath he took.

He managed to get in a solid hour of meditation before everything went wrong.

“Navy ship approaching!” Iluq called from the raven-eagle’s nest. “Coming in fast!”

“I’ll take point,” Hakoda called, running past Zuko’s spot. “Bato, with me. Zuko, take our starboard side.”

“Aye, captain,” Zuko said, jumping to his feet. He let the flame dissolve into the deck, iron glowing for a second before fading out, and manned his post. _Lucky that I didn’t get a chance to change out of uniform_ _,_ he thought, as the cruiser drew ever closer.

Then, from behind him–

“This is so messed up!” 

And then: “I’ll handle this. The Avatar is back!”

“Aang, no!” Katara cried. Zuko turned to see the Avatar trying to glide out to meet the ship. In the back of his mind, he noted that the kid now had hair, which made sense on a technical level, but wow, seeing it was weird.

Katara said something else to the Avatar, which evidently convinced him to not fight an entire cruiser by himself. Hakoda approached them, and a minute later the deck was clear except for the warriors in Fire Nation uniforms.

The ships docked. _How carefully were they watching us?_ Zuko wondered. _Were they close enough to see him?_

Of course, the Avatar was nearly unrecognizable with hair, so they had that going for them.

The first thing the commander who descended from the other ship said was loud enough for Zuko to hear. “Captain, why are you off course?”

“Sir, I–”

“All ships in the Western fleet have been ordered to Ba Sing Se, without exception!”

Zuko had a bad feeling about this. His fingers brushed against his scabbard, checking to make sure his stolen sword was there without looking suspicious.

“Actually, we’re from the Eastern fleet, sir,” Hakoda said. “We have orders to deliver cargo.”

 _Oh no,_ Zuko thought. They weren’t flying Eastern colors, and why would they be sailing east instead of west, and–

–okay, they hadn’t noticed those things.

“Nice of Admiral Chan to let us know he was sending one of his ships our way,” the commander said sharply.

Bato made some excuse, promised to send two hawks next time (if Zuko weren’t in a highly visible position, he would be banging his head against something in the hopes of knocking himself unconscious, because this was physically painful to listen to) and bowed.

As the commander was leaving, one of his lieutenants half-turned and said something to him. They continued walking, ever-so-slightly faster, across the gangplank.

“They know!” Toph screamed, bursting out of the deck like an undead badger-mole. She stomped and broke the gangplank, dropping the three officers into the water.

Zuko drew his sword and ran for the bow. Before he got there, Katara stood and summoned a huge wave, pushing the other ship nearly a quarter-mile away.

The ship stabilized quickly, to Zuko’s guilty relief. The commander and her officers climbed aboard.

“Load me up,” Toph ordered, taking a deep stance. “Sparky, you’re on defense.”

“Don’t call me that,” Zuko grumbled, setting himself up to blast large objects out of the sky. “Where’d you leave the Avatar?”

“Sokka’s got him belowdecks,” Katara said. She pushed and pulled up from the ocean, creating a blanket of fog. “There, we’ve got some cover.”

Toph flung a boulder at the distant ship. It was a good hit, denting the side of the hull, but she grunted in annoyance. “Another!”

Pipsqueak obliged.

“Look out!” said The Duke, tapping Toph’s shoulder.

Toph sent her boulder flying in the direction of the incoming fireball, shattering both projectiles above open water. She stomped, throwing a smaller boulder up into the air, and punched it into the other ship’s wheelhouse. Zuko flinched.

“Sparky, they’re trying to kill us,” Toph snapped. “Get on board.”

He was able to block the next three fireballs, dissolving them into harmless showers of sparks with his own blasts.

But he was so focused on the sky that he failed to spot the harpoon until it was too late.

“Harpoon!” he yelled, grabbing Toph’s sleeve and pulling her back from the railing. She shoved him away as it hit; he lost his footing and slammed into the deck.

Everything went white, and then stars started swimming in his vision. Later _(_ _has it been a second? a minute?_ _)_ he realized that he was braced on his hands and knees, and the battle was still happening.

A fireball hit a meter away from his face with a deafening screech. He flinched away, trying to scramble to his feet and finding that he couldn’t.

Eventually, he managed to look up.

There was…a water dragon on the horizon. No, that wasn’t the right word. An eel. No, not that either. The not-a-dragon was wrapping itself around the other ship.

As Zuko watched, they sank into the churning sea. He turned away to see Sokka punching the air in glee.

The world started swimming again. Someone was approaching him, a concerned look on their face, but they faded too fast for him to recognize them.

He let the deck envelop him.

* * *

He woke up alone.

The room was dark, lit only by a candle. He recognized it, actually: the sickbay.

Great.

Zuko sat up, gasping as his head throbbed, and reached for the water on the bedside table. He sipped it slowly, trying to remember what had happened.

A battle, a harpoon, an impact, and then his head had hit the deck. After that, nothing.

He set the mug down and immediately frowned. _That’s not right._

Zuko picked it up and set it down again, more deliberately, and then again, with enough force that a lesser mug might have shattered.

_I can’t hear it._

“I can’t hear anything,” he said out loud, the words vibrating in his throat. Nothing. It was like he’d stuffed cotton into his ears.

They weren’t even ringing. His left ear had been ringing on and off for three years, and the annoying-as-hell noise was nowhere to be found.

A sense of dizziness let him know that he was breathing too fast. He took deeper breaths, trying to slow himself down. _It’s okay. You’ve survived this before._

His hearing had been really bad for the first three months after the Agni Kai. His left ear had never regained much, but his right had mostly recovered.

A crack of light appeared around the door, incredibly bright. He flinched as it widened and then disappeared, blinking away the afterimage.

Katara stepped into the candlelight. He flinched before he could stop himself, staring up at her.

Her mouth moved. He’d never been an expert at lipreading, but even he could guess what she was asking. _Are you okay?_

“I can’t,” he said, and then stopped. _Take a breath and enunciate._ “I can’t hear anything.”

“Oh,” Katara said. (Bad at lipreading or not, that one was hard to miss.) She looked more concerned, and then thoughtful. She pointed at him, and then her head. She made a crashing gesture and pointed at him and then her ear.

Translation, nothing he didn’t already know: he hit his head and it’s affecting his hearing.

Then Katara took a moment to think, clearly trying to put something into gestures.

“If you talk, I can try to read your lips,” Zuko said, tired of waiting.

He squinted as she spoke. _Temporary._

“Temporary?” he said, to confirm. She nodded, smiling. “How long was I out?”

She held up four fingers.

“Four days?!”

She shook her head vigorously. _Hours, then._ He nodded to show he understood.

Katara sat beside him in the bed and gently pushed him down, making a face he was intimately familiar with; healers were apparently universal. She poured more water into the mug, gave him a perfunctory pat on the shoulder, and stood back up.

She pointed at the door, back in his direction, and then tapped her waterskin. _Back later for healing and/or hydration enforcement._ He nodded, and she left him alone.

He wasn’t really intending to fall asleep, but the room was dark and he was tired, despite getting four continuous hours of unplanned rest. So he shut his eyes for a while.

* * *

This time, he felt a lot better when he woke up. The door was cracked, letting a bit of light in; he squinted at it until his eyes adjusted.

He drank the mug of water. His head throbbed, but in a tolerable way. When he set the mug down, he still couldn’t hear it.

There was a bandage wrapped around his head. He hadn’t noticed that the first time he’d woken up. It felt like he’d been hit on the right side of his head, behind his temple.

He was still wearing the Fire Nation robes, which meant they hadn’t undressed him when they’d moved him into the sickbay bed. _Good._

As a test, he stood up, bracing himself against the wall. The dizziness was almost overwhelming, but it eventually faded, and he took a few steps forward until he ran into the counter.

The candle was still lit. He gave it a little flare, just because he could, and kept walking until he reached the door.

Up close, the brightness of the hallway seemed insurmountable. He opened the door a bit at a time, letting the light stab him in his eyes until they adjusted.

Finally, it was open enough for him to stumble into the hallway.

Sunlight was filtering in from the staircase up to the deck. He slowly shuffled toward it, keeping his hand on the railing, and pulled himself up onto the deck.

Agni was out in all his glory, shining bright and true. The light was too much for Zuko’s eyes; he shut them and basked in the warmth.

He slumped to the ground without entirely meaning to, just enough out of the way that the crew wouldn’t run him over if they needed the stairs.

As the sun warmed him, he could feel his strength returning bit by bit. He snapped his fingers and created a little flame; he didn’t need to look to know it was there. He let it go after a few seconds.

The temperature suddenly dropped as a cloud passed in front of the sun. Zuko opened one eye to glare at it, but it was a really strangely-shaped cloud.

It seemed to be talking to him, actually.

Oh.

The cloud was Bato. Zuko opened both eyes and waited for him to stop talking before pointing at his good ear and shaking his head pointedly.

Bato knelt next to him, making it easier for Zuko to see him. Zuko folded himself up into agura and looked at him.

 _These people really need to learn to sign properly_ , Zuko thought, as Bato put together a series of gestures. _Small, forehead, whoosh. Okay, that’s the Avatar. What about him?_

Bato turned and scanned the horizon, turned back to Zuko, shrugged aggressively, and pointed at him.

“You lost the damned Avatar?” Zuko said in disbelief. From Bato’s confused look, his words hadn’t been comprehensible.

Fine. He could do this one common-sense sign at a time.

 _You_ – Zuko pointed at Bato.

 _Lost_ – He looked around, holding his palms up.

 _The Avatar_ – He tapped his own forehead and made the gesture for ‘small.’

_Are you kidding me?!_

Bato shifted his weight uncomfortably. He made a flying gesture and then gently pulled Zuko to his feet to lead him to the wheelhouse.

 _Oh, okay,_ Zuko thought. _You think just because I chased the kid for three years, I know how to track him in the middle of the ocean with nothing to go on?_

He examined the map showing their current location. They were in the middle of nowhere, essentially.

Where could the Avatar go, from here?

Southwest, to Capital City? A laughable idea.

North or east, back to the Earth Kingdom? Unlikely.

Due south, then, to the Southern Air Temple or the Southern Water Tribe? The Southern Air Temple was empty, which the Avatar certainly knew by now, and he had all the Southern Water Tribe members he needed on the _Ika._

Zuko looked at the island chain, remembering a very disturbing day. _Roku’s temple. He’s heading for Crescent Island_. He tacked a course, set the ship on it, and nodded at Bato as he left.

On the deck, Hakoda and Katara seemed to be having a moment. A very emotional moment, with tears and hugs. Zuko glanced over the bow. _Into the storm._

He slipped belowdecks to check the boiler room. Iluq was on duty there, shoveling coal into the furnace.

He nodded when he saw Zuko. Zuko nodded back and left. _That’s under control._

Back on deck, he climbed up to the raven-eagle’s nest and took the colors down, folding the flag neatly and stowing it in the wheelhouse. He ignored the three crew members who tried to speak to him.

He made his way through the ship, shutting hatches and getting her storm-ready. The seas grew steadily choppier, until they were lurching vertically with every wave.

They sailed into the heart of the storm. Zuko stayed in the wheelhouse. Bato joined him, and between them they held a steady course, even when their only landmark was the jumping compass needle.

As suddenly as they’d entered the storm, they left it. Crescent Island loomed ahead of them, a solid igneous mass.

 _The temple_ is _gone,_ Zuko thought. _Roku really destroyed the whole thing._

But a temple encased in stone was still a temple, and Crescent Island was still a holy place. Fresh lava was flowing down from the island’s peak, solidifying and creating great clouds of steam as it dropped into the sea. And there was a tiny dot on the shoreline, tan and dark red against black.

The lemur flew past the wheelhouse, heading straight for the island. Appa paced on the deck, impatient, as the Avatar’s friends hurried to get into his saddle.

Bato nudged him towards them, and mouthed, “Go.”

Hesitantly, he approached the bison. Katara grinned, and she and Toph pulled him up into the saddle. Katara sat facing him as they took off.

She pointed at him – _You_ – and then at the tiny dot on the island – _the Avatar_ – and back at the ship – _traced him here._

He nodded. “I’ve had a lot of practice guessing where he would go.”

“Thank you,” she said.

They landed, and Katara, Toph, and Sokka flung themselves out of the saddle. Zuko climbed down more carefully, trailing behind Appa as they approached the Avatar.

After a big group hug, including Appa and excluding Zuko _thank-you-very-much_ , they had a conversation.

Okay, Zuko really hadn’t realized how good he’d had it with one mostly-functioning ear. Sure, he couldn’t always catch everything, but at least he could understand _some_ things.

For instance, right now, he might have understood why the Avatar was throwing his glider into flowing lava.

They watched it burn and climbed back onto Appa to head back to the _Ika._ Zuko followed, not paying a lot of attention to their conversation. At one point, Aang turned to Zuko and asked a question. His gaze shifted to Katara as she spoke and then back to Zuko _._

If there was one thing that Zuko didn’t need and never would, it was the Avatar’s pity. He stared back until Aang turned away.

Once they were back on the ship, the group went and found Hakoda and Bato. They had a long conversation, which Zuko understood almost none of. He watched their expressions, trying to categorize them.

Sokka was determined; Katara, equally so. Aang looked like he was about to fall over, but he was clearly opinionated about whatever was happening.

Toph was mostly listening, letting the others make their arguments.

Bato looked irritated. Hakoda looked concerned.

Zuko edged toward Toph, who seemed the least committed to the conversation. He said, hoping that he was being reasonably quiet, “What are they talking about?”

Toph turned and snapped something at the rest of them. The conversation stopped, and everyone stared at Zuko.

Zuko held very still, trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

Katara said something, and Bato and Hakoda each took a step back. She gestured at the remaining group – the Avatar, Sokka, Toph, Zuko, and herself – and then pointed at Appa.

 _She wants us to leave the_ Ika _and fly on Appa._

She ran into the wheelhouse and came back out clutching a map. She knelt and spread it out on the deck, tapping once on their current location. Zuko nodded. She traced a line through the island chain of the Fire Nation, winding through the eastern islands of the archipelago before ending at Capital City.

Zuko, starting at the same point, traced a line directly there and patted the deck twice. _The ship is fine, and it’ll be faster._

Katara shook her head. She pointed at the Avatar and redrew her line, pausing at each marked town. She pointed at Zuko, and then at the towns again. _The Avatar wants…to be on the ground in the Fire Nation._

Zuko pointed at the Avatar, and then tugged on the sleeve of his Fire Nation uniform and pointed at the towns, lowering his eyebrow in a question: _why?_

The Avatar thought for a moment. He pointed at himself, his head, Zuko, and the map. Then he made a flat palm and walked his fingers across it and ended his sentence with a complicated gesture. It reminded Zuko of the ending to an old kids’ rhyme Ty Lee had loved: _open the gates, and see all the people_.

Translation, as far as Zuko could figure: the Avatar wanted to know Zuko’s people. He wanted to understand the people of the Fire Nation by walking among them.

In the ordinary course of things, Zuko would consider that a terrible idea. It was dangerous and took much longer than sailing. Plus, trying to understand the people you were fighting was not always conducive to winning. (You had to understand your enemy, of course, but there quickly came a point where understanding crossed into humanizing.)

But this was the Avatar. If Zuko had sworn not to fight him, then maybe it was a good thing that he wanted to understand the Fire Nation.

He looked at Katara and nodded.

They left the next morning at dawn, with enough food to last a week if they were careful about it. Appa flew above the clouds, taking them towards the next inhabited island.

Hopefully nobody would spot them. The issue they encountered when the clouds dissipated was quickly solved by Katara and the Avatar, working together to waterbend mist around them.

 _Great. A flying, air-bison-sized cloud. That’s not suspicious at all,_ Zuko thought, but he left it alone. A weird cloud was probably more normal than an air bison.

They didn’t seem to be talking, anyways. It wasn’t like anyone would hear them from up here, but Sokka had violently shushed everyone who’d tried to speak until they got the message.

Appa took them down over into some quiet-looking hills by the seaside. Sokka hopped down first and then beckoned the rest of them over. A toucan-puffin hopped onto his head. Zuko had to hold back a laugh at how _mad_ he looked.

Toph, at least, seemed to greatly appreciate being on land; she immediately earthbent herself a sort of stone hammock to lie down in. Zuko appreciated the break from flying, too; he built a fire for them to heat up dinner over and sat by it, strategically positioned so that he got maximum fire and maximum sunlight.

Katara said something to Sokka that made him roll his eyes. She gestured at him, and then herself, Zuko, and Toph.

Zuko glanced at Toph, who was apparently watching him with her strangely accurate rock-vision. She tugged on one of her sleeves, and then pointed at the cave exit.

_Katara thinks we should get better Fire Nation clothes so that we don’t have to live in a cave. Okay, good plan._

Toph punched the wall, summoning a swarm of cave-hoppers. The lemur grabbed one and ate it, looking sadly at the others as they evidently decided not to stay.

Zuko held up a hand and pointed to the sun, which was nearly at the horizon. He patted the cave floor.

Sokka nodded in agreement. Katara rolled her eyes, but agreed, holding up a finger to show she meant _one night_ and _one night only._

It would be easier to steal clothes in the morning, anyways. Most families took their drying laundry in at night.

Something glimmered on the cave wall. He touched it, and his hand came away damp. _Fresh water. It must be a spring._

He stood up, collected a few scattered waterskins, and wandered deeper into the cave until he found a spot where enough water flowed to fill them.

Something touched his shoulder. He jerked away from the wall, grabbing his sword, but it was only Katara.

She mouthed, “Sorry,” and picked up one of the waterskins he’d dropped. She bent a stream of water into it, filling it quickly, and capped it.

Zuko filled the other waterskins and capped them. He scrubbed some of the dirt from his hands, not particularly minding the chill. The fire would warm him when he returned to it.

Then he had a thought. Katara was a healer. She couldn’t heal his left ear, probably, but the injury that had taken the hearing from his right ear was only a couple days old.

He made eye contact with Katara. He pointed at her, the water, and his right ear, and raised his eyebrow. _Could you heal me?_

Katara nodded. She took some water from the cave wall, swirling it in the air until it was pure, and directed it into Zuko’s ear.

It was a horrible sensation. It tickled and stung, and if he’d thought the water on his hands had been cold, then he’d simply been mistaken, because the water inside of his ear was _frigid_.

He held very still as she worked, a strange blue glow illuminating her hands. The inside of his head grew colder, and colder. His left hand started to tremble; he passed the waterskins to his right hand.

It was a long few minutes before she stopped, drawing the water back out and letting it fall to the cave floor with a splash.

She asked him a question. He shook his head, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, and went back up to the cave entrance and the gloriously warm fire that, thank Agni, somebody had stoked in his absence.

He set his pile of waterskins down and sat down, scooting as close to the fire as he could without burning himself.

The skies darkened outside of the cave as the sun slipped away.

Zuko tended the fire as the others laid down on their bedrolls. They didn’t set up a watch, which was fine. He hadn’t planned on sleeping, anyways, not when he couldn’t hear the danger coming.

The night crept by slowly. The Avatar twitched in his sleep, causing his lemur to squirm out of his arms and curl up on Appa’s head instead. Zuko kept the fire burning low, venturing out twice to collect armfuls of sticks.

Finally, the sun rose. Zuko felt it even before the first rays of light broke through the gray pre-dawn fog outside of the cave. He stood, allowed the initial wave of dizziness to fade, walked to the cave entrance, and stretched as he waited for Agni’s appearance.

The fog burned off quickly. By the time the sun was fully visible, the others had woken up and were making breakfast.

Out of habit, Zuko made a small pot of tea for himself. Surprisingly, the others each had a cup; he hadn’t realized they drank tea. In retrospect, that did make a certain amount of sense: Katara had walked into the Jasmine Dragon expecting an ordinary tea shop, not Zuko. _I’ll have to remember to make more next time._

After eating a quick meal, they packed up their camp and left Appa to guard what they weren’t carrying for the day. Sokka led them to the nearest town, following the path traced out on his map.

They snuck over the top of a hill. At the bottom, the villagers had dug down to expose black rock. A dozen clotheslines stretched from one side to the other, and the sun was already heating the rock to dry the clothes. There were plenty of clothes to choose from.

The Avatar darted forward, snagged a schoolboy’s uniform, and ran back, grinning at the thrill. Zuko tried not to roll his eyes.

Katara and Toph went together. Katara grabbed a dress and a silk robe for herself, and helped Toph pick out a tunic in an appropriate size.

Sokka and Zuko went after them. Sokka seemed indecisive about what he wanted, going back and forth between several styles. Zuko took down the first men’s tunic that looked like it would fit him and the pants hanging besides it. He waited impatiently as Sokka made his decision, and they returned to the rest of the group.

In turns, they changed into their new clothes. Zuko’s tunic fit well, better than he remembered. It had been a long time since he’d worn anything from the Fire Nation except a military uniform. The fabric was lightweight and sturdy-feeling, dyed dark red with yellow and black accents.

They snuck back out of the village successfully. Hopefully, the residents would blame the loss on the wind or some kids joking around. There was no reason for them to suspect anything more.

Appa flew them to the next island, which had a lot more people. They landed a good distance from the town, and Toph quickly located a cave for them to set up camp in.

It was a nice cave. Roomy, with high ceilings and a stream nearby.

Zuko found himself wondering what the point of stealing Fire Nation clothes was if they were just going to keep sleeping in caves, but Katara and Sokka evidently had a plan. After making camp, they all walked into the town. The Avatar turned his belt into a headband, concealing his tattoo.

Zuko took in the sights just as curiously as the Avatar as they wandered through the streets. Except for visiting Ember Island, he’d never really been anywhere in the Fire Nation outside of Capital City.

They headed into an open-air market. It smelled like fire flakes and fried food, like the Fire Festivals back home. Zuko smiled; he had always loved those rare days when he and Azula had been allowed a few hours’ freedom to run around and see all of the sights. (That had stopped, after Mother left. Father had told him that he needed to be more mature.)

They stopped at a jewelry stand. Katara bought a necklace for herself and a crown for Toph. Sokka found a stylish hair ornament and used it to put up his sad attempt at a topknot.

Zuko would have to educate him later.

The Avatar was _continuously_ talking. Zuko, of course, had no idea what about. He seemed to be saying hello to every person they passed. Toph looked dubious, and Sokka looked a bit annoyed. The strangers he spoke to looked very confused.

A few minutes later, the Avatar spotted a firebending demonstration and dragged them all over to it, despite Zuko’s protests.

He rolled his eyes as the demonstration went on. The men were solid benders, but they were too showy. And their firebreathing wasn’t even real, it was a trick with some sort of flammable liquid.

He made the mistake of looking at the others to see if they were as irritated as he was, which led to him lipreading as Sokka said, “That’s hot.”

Sokka did look flushed, but honestly, what did he expect? It was a _firebending_ demonstration.

The benders finished their show, and Katara tugged the Avatar away before he could run up to talk to them. After a while, they stopped at a stall to get food. The Avatar looked at the menu and frowned. Sokka gestured to a hippo-cow in a nearby stable, which was eating...also hippo-cow, probably.

Right. Air nomads were vegetarians. The Avatar sulked off toward the garbage bin. Zuko caught him by the sleeve and dragged him back into line.

When it was their turn to order, he said, “Two vegetable kebabs, one mild.”

The Avatar looked a little insulted. “Mild?” he said. (Well, Zuko was pretty sure that was what he said. He didn’t bother with replying.)

Their food came quickly – one of the many benefits of street food – and they sat down at a table to eat. Zuko put some hot sauce on his kebabs. The Avatar grabbed the bottle. Zuko grabbed his arm and pushed it down. _Try it first, airbender._

Sokka, Katara, and the Avatar each took their first bites. Sokka turned bright red, Katara drained her waterskin, and the Avatar started hyperventilating, trying to bring cool air into his mouth.

Zuko clutched his side, nearly falling over with laughter. _They’ve never had food this spicy! Ha!_

Across from him, Toph was asking questions. Katara wheezed out an answer, and then Toph started laughing too.

Zuko laughed all the way back to the stand, where he bought a small tub of sour hippo-cow cream and some water.

To think that after all this time, all he needed to defeat the Avatar was a mild vegetable kebab.

When they had all calmed down and, in several cases, made better food decisions, they finished their meals and moved on. They left the market district and wandered through the residential streets aimlessly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zuko saw something familiar. When he turned, he saw his own face staring back at him from a sign plastered to a brick wall.

_Wanted: Former Prince Zuko, Traitor to the Fire Nation. In league with the Avatar. Do not attempt to capture._

In the Fire Nation military, “do not attempt to capture” had only one meaning. _My people are trying to kill me?_

He stood, staring the words down until the others came back. ( _Former prince._ That was him, a _former prince_.) Toph grabbed his belt and tugged him away. He let her.

With that, they started wandering in the out-of-town direction. At least, until the army officers spotted them and started running.

Toph was the first to notice. She punched Zuko, who turned and grabbed Sokka’s arm, which effectively brought the group to a halt.

The officers addressed Zuko directly. He glanced at Sokka. _Why me?_ If they’d recognized him, they would have attacked him on sight or called for backup instead of confronting him.

One of them grabbed the Avatar by the arm and gestured at his uniform, exasperated.

 _Oh. He’s wearing a school uniform,_ Zuko thought. _Okay. We can work with that._

“Officers, I apologize,” he said. “I’m deaf. I can’t understand you. Please speak to my cousin.” He gestured at Sokka, and bowed deeply to the officers.

Sokka had a brief conversation with the officer in charge, which ended with the Avatar being dragged away. He gave them a thumbs-up as he went.

_Are they taking him back to school? What’s happening?_

Zuko looked at Sokka, who looked disgruntled, and then to Katara, who looked worried. Toph was laughing.

Sokka led them back into the hills to their cave. Zuko rummaged around in their supplies until he found parchment, ink, and a decent stylus.

 _Did they take the Avatar to a school? What’s the plan?_ he wrote. He shoved the parchment in Sokka’s direction.

Sokka read it, nodded, and then scribbled something down. His writing was sloppy and he let the ink splatter, but Zuko could read it.

_They took Aang to school. He’ll come back as soon as he can escape and we’ll move on._

Okay. Good plan. Zuko nodded and tucked the parchment away. He’d probably need it later, with the way things were going.

Lacking anything better to do, he sat and watched Katara waterbend. Uncle had claimed to have learned how to redirect lightning from waterbenders, and Zuko could see the resemblance. Her motions were smooth, flowing, and always centered.

Sokka sharpened his boomerang. Toph picked her toes. Zuko started a fire and meditated, gaze narrowing until he was focused exclusively on his breath and the flames in front of him.

Someone touched his shoulder. Zuko flinched and the flames flared high, nearly reaching Katara’s arm.

He snuffed the fire out, glancing up at her. _Not hurt. Okay._

She looked a bit startled, but sat down beside him and pulled out her waterskin. She pointed at it and then his ear.

He nodded.

Katara pulled the water out and pushed it into his ear again. It was just as uncomfortable as the last time, except that he knew what was coming, so it was almost worse. He held still as she worked.

Finally, she withdrew and wrote on the parchment. _I think the injury was to your eardrum. I was able to make a bit of progress, but it needs time._

 _Thank you,_ he wrote back.

She asked him a question aloud. He frowned and shook his head. _Nothing yet, but it feels closer,_ he thought. It hurt a little less, and the dizziness wasn’t as bad the next time he stood up.

The Avatar slid into the cave late in the day, when it was nearly sunset. Katara and Sokka lectured him for a while as Zuko looked on. He looked…happy. “Happy” was usually not an emotion associated with school, in Zuko’s experience. Then again, maybe the local school was different than the Academy in Capital City.

Or maybe the Avatar was just incorrigibly optimistic.

Sokka dramatically interrogated the Avatar about everything that had happened at the school. Katara, sitting down beside Zuko and Toph, wrote a few things down for him to read:

_Aang said he was a colonist. He learned a lot. He wants to go back tomorrow._

Then the Avatar held up a picture of the Fire Lord. Zuko made a face, until he saw the _other_ picture, which was made of noodles. Then he made a worse face. (It was horrible! He wasn’t trying not to laugh, because why would he laugh at that?)

After another few minutes of discussion, Sokka nodded reluctantly, and the Avatar cheered and saluted him. Zuko tried to figure out what he’d said, but ended up asking Katara.

 _Flamey-o, hotman. He says it’s what Kuzon always said,_ Katara wrote, _Is there actually a secret river going straight into the palace and do they actually teach you about it in school?_

Zuko made such a confused face that Katara waterbent the ink to erase the question, nodding like she’d expected that to be his answer.

The Avatar asked him another question. Katara transcribed.

_You seem to be doing okay without your hearing. How did you learn to do that?_

“I lost the hearing in my left ear when I got this,” Zuko said, gesturing to the left half of his face. “I adapted. This is just an extension of what I learned three years ago. I don’t like talking when I can’t hear, but I can do it when I need to.”

The Avatar spoke again and Katara wrote, _That must have been a horrible accident. They’re really careful about firebending at school._

Zuko stared at the Avatar, trying to figure out what he meant. _Everyone knows…or no, I guess not._

“It wasn’t an accident,” he said.

_I don’t understand. You’re the prince. Who could attack you?_

Beside Aang, Sokka suddenly looked horrified. He stared at Zuko.

“The Fire Lord,” Zuko said, starting to wish he wasn’t taking part in this conversation.

The Avatar protested, looking from Zuko to Katara to Sokka. Toph looked tense, like she was ready to run away.

“My father,” Zuko said. He couldn’t hear the words coming out of his mouth, but it felt _wrong_ in the middle of the second word, which probably meant his voice had cracked. He swallowed and continued. “I was disrespectful to a general in the war room. I was challenged to an Agni Kai. I didn’t realize I would be facing my father until it started.”

Azula had laughed, when he’d turned around and seen Father standing at the other end of the arena. He’d remembered her words from the night Mother had vanished: _Father agreed to kill you, you know. A firstborn for a firstborn._

 _What did you do?_ Katara wrote, looking at him with the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

“I didn’t try to fight him. He burned me and I was banished until I could come back with the Avatar,” Zuko said.

Before he knew what was happening, the Avatar had thrown himself at Zuko, nearly knocking him backwards.

“Hey!” Zuko protested, but the Avatar’s hug - _Aang’s_ hug was unavoidable, so he gave in. Sokka, Katara, and Toph joined in.

He let it happen for precisely fifteen seconds (it was sort of nice, okay, and even if they weren’t warm, they were good insulation) before pushing them off of him. “Okay, ouch. Get off.”

They all sat back in their little circle.

“It was a long time ago,” Zuko said. “It healed.”

Katara frowned, but she didn’t voice her disagreement.

He didn’t sleep that night either. Throughout the night, a strange pressure seemed to be increasing in his ear. It didn’t hurt, but there was something _there_ that hadn’t been before.

As the morning star rose, just ahead of the sun, Zuko finally realized what it was. _My ear is ringing!_

Normally, that would be cause for mild irritation, but ringing meant his hearing must have been coming back. He grinned as Agni peered over the horizon, running through his three most advanced forms before going back inside the cave to make tea.

Aang rushed off to school after breakfast, completely unworried about his unfinished homework.

The four of them stayed behind. Zuko, having seen his poster, didn’t want to go back into town, Toph felt it was redundant (“I can see nothing just fine here, and people are boring”), and Katara and Sokka wanted to plan out their next moves.

When Aang skidded into the cave in a whirlwind of leaves and dust a couple hours past noon, Zuko was pretty alarmed. Aang explained the situation to Katara, who wrote it out for Zuko.

 _Aang got in a fight and the principal told him to bring his parents immediately,_ she wrote.

“Did you win?” Zuko asked him. He _looked_ tiny and airbender-y, but Zuko had been on the receiving end of enough air blasts to know that they weren’t to be taken lightly.

Aang nodded. Zuko gave him a thumbs-up.

Sokka immediately glued a fake beard to his face. _Oh, Agni, they’re all going to die,_ Zuko thought as they prepared to leave. Katara put her hair up in an elegant style that was almost nothing like her usual loopies. Zuko stopped Sokka before he could try the topknot and put it up himself, securing it with the ornament Sokka had bought at the market.

When Sokka’s hand went up to his hair, Zuko gave him a warning look. _Don’t touch it._

“What names are you using?” Zuko asked.

They looked at each other and shrugged. Sokka scribbled his answer down. _Wang and Sapphire Fire._

“No.”

Sokka threw up his hands: _well, what then?_

He pointed at Sokka. “Jee Eto.” Then at Katara. “Anzu Eto.”

They came back an hour or so later. Sokka looked exhausted. He stroked his fake beard while he lectured Aang. (Katara snickered as some of the hairs came off.)

Aang argued back.

Finally, they came to some sort of agreement.

 _Aang is throwing his classmates a secret dance party because his classmates say that Fire Nation kids don’t dance,_ Katara wrote.

 _What?_ Zuko wrote back. Katara shrugged. _Why would we want to dance?_ he wrote.

 _Freedom and self-expression,_ Katara wrote, rolling her eyes. _Aang says Kuzon danced. You should stay for it. It’ll be fun._

_I’m too recognizable._

_It’ll be dark._

_No._

And that was that.

Aang went to school for the third time, hopefully the last if Sokka had his way, and Zuko helped the others pack up their camp.

Once their stuff was stowed in an alcove near the cave entrance, Toph summoned a stone dance floor from deep underground. Zuko put a hand on the wall, steadying himself as the ground rippled and bent to her will.

Once the ground had settled, he set up some makeshift torches around the perimeter of the room at Sokka’s direction. When Sokka took out a flint to light them, Zuko gave him a puzzled look.

Sokka returned the look, equally puzzled.

“I can light those,” Zuko offered. “If you stand by the entrance.”

Sokka, Katara, and Toph stood by the entrance. Zuko took a breath, sinking into a half stance, and whirled into a knife-hand strike, sending a narrow flame out to light each of the torches.

He straightened when he was done and looked over at the others. Sokka gave him a thumbs-up.

Just before sundown, Aang returned to the cave. He convinced Appa to hide in the back of the cave, around a hidden corner. The air bison went reluctantly. When Toph looked up suddenly toward the cave entrance and signaled Katara, Zuko went back into the cave as well, carrying his pack with him.

He sat there, in the dark, leaning against Appa because nobody else was there to judge him for it. (Appa was warm, and his fur was soft, and he protested whenever Zuko moved away.) He couldn’t hear what was going on, but the cave floor had started shaking a little bit, which probably meant that Aang had invited a _lot_ of his classmates.

And, apparently, convinced them to dance. Zuko was half-convinced that he could hear their stomps from time to time, but he wasn’t really sure.

After an hour or so, he decided it couldn’t hurt to look. He peeked out from behind the cavern wall, carefully keeping the left half of his face in the shadows.

There were dozens of Fire Nation students, all around Aang’s or Katara’s age, gathered around the dance floor. Most of them were clapping and stomping in rhythm. A few were dancing. In the middle were Aang and Katara, who were doing a paired dance that looked strangely like a waterbending form.

It was a good thing Fire Nation students didn’t learn how to recognize waterbenders by their movements. Otherwise, Aang and Katara would have been in a lot of trouble.

Their dance finished with a flourish. They wound up close together, face-to-face, both grinning, but backed away quickly as the other students started dancing more enthusiastically.

A ripple of alarm spread through the crowd, freezing them in place. Several adults and a student stood in the cave entrance. All dancing immediately stopped, except for Aang, who showed no fear in the face of the principal.

The principal grabbed for Aang, who ducked away. The room immediately erupted into chaos as the adults waded through the crowd of students, grabbing everyone who wore a headband.

“Appa, let’s go,” Zuko said. They used the chaos to sneak out of the room.

It wasn’t a very sneaky exit. A lot of students stared at him and Appa. But the adults were occupied by their fruitless search for Aang in a sea of red headbands, and they were the ones Zuko really needed to avoid. (If it came down to it, he could fight a gang of kids. Adults were harder.)

The others were waiting outside. They threw their stuff into Appa’s saddle and took off, spiraling into the sky until they reached the clouds. Aang got high fives from Sokka and Toph, probably congratulating him on his escape.

Then they spread out the map, and Zuko summoned a flame for them to read it by. Together, he and Sokka matched their planned path to the stars, and from his seat at the base of Appa’s neck, Aang turned Appa toward the next island in the Fire Nation archipelago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko: Maybe their visual acuity is based on movement, like tigerdillos…They can’t see me if I don’t move.  
> Every time I use the word ‘scoot’ I think of Jack Zimmermann. (I have arbitrarily decided that, much like Jack, Zuko was a goofy-looking baby. No, I’m not crying because Check Please ended, even if it has been my emotional stability webcomic since high school. Okay, maybe I am,)  
> I was getting very tired of typing “the Avatar.” Fortunately, Zuko got a bit of relationship development in the form of a GROUP HUG.


	4. The Painted Lady | Sokka’s Master

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by @aceprincezuko  
> Mizugame: modern Japanese name for the Aquarius constellation, which has a meteor shower every May.  
> They’re still on the very edge of the Fire Nation archipelago, according to the ATLA wiki.

The next island in the chain was significantly larger than the previous two they’d stayed on, but it was still tiny compared to the inner islands. They landed high on the leeside of the tallest mountain and followed a stream down the mountain for several hours in the early morning sun. Zuko picked lychee nuts along the way, which made for a perfectly fine breakfast in his opinion. (Uncle would disagree; he always wanted tea and bread, with fish or dried meat if they had it.)

When the stream became large enough for Appa to comfortably swim in it, they all climbed into his saddle and drifted slowly downstream. Aang and Katara practiced their waterbending, using ice to skim the surface of the river. Zuko watched them, sharing his stash of lychee nuts with Toph and Sokka and idly noting the gaps and pauses in their forms.

He nudged Sokka. “Can you tell Katara that if she moves from her wave-forming to the water whip without an intermediate movement to drop the wave, she’ll be less vulnerable while she switches stances?”

Sokka relayed the comment. Katara whipped around and shouted something back. Toph snorted.

Sokka found a blank space on the piece of parchment laying in front of him and wrote, _Fuck off, firebender,_ jabbing the stylus at Katara to emphasize that they were her words and not his own.

Zuko shrugged, not especially offended. _Her choice._ But if he ever wound up fighting her, he’d take advantage of the gap, and so would Azula if she was given the chance.

They drifted past a factory town around midday. Appa swam to the far side of the river, and Katara and Aang created a sideways standing wave to disguise them. (Zuko didn’t think that a standing wave was a very good disguise, but it was probably better not to argue.)

Zuko watched as the river turned cloudy. It wasn’t just mud stirred up by the villagers; there was also chemical pollution from the factory’s wastewater.

Katara frowned and stuck a hand into the water, wiggling her entire arm. She said something to the others.

 _No fish in the river,_ Sokka wrote.

“That can’t be right,” Zuko said. “The villagers on this island mostly live on fish. It’s their only major export.”

Katara shrugged.

They drifted until the sun was low in the sky. Zuko did gentle firebreaths to keep himself warm as the wind coming off the water grew bitterly cold.

When it was fully dark, Appa climbed onto a large rock and shook himself dry. They set up camp for the night a few yards away from the river, under the cover of willow trees.

Cold rations and hot tea served as dinner. Katara did a healing session on Zuko’s ear as the moon rose, and everyone but Zuko was asleep by the time the moon was overhead.

To stave off the chill, he crept back out to the rock on the river and practiced his forms, which limited him to linear movement instead of being able to take up a wide space.

It was a nice challenge. He kept his bending to a minimum; he was able to keep warm by moving and he didn’t want to send up a signal to anyone nearby.

When he was satisfied with his adaptations to the forms, he knelt to meditate. As his heart rate slowed down and he relaxed, he realized that he could just barely hear the lap of the river at the water’s edge.

And also footsteps behind him.

Zuko spun, drawing his sword, but it was only Aang.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Zuko asked.

Aang pointed at him, tilting his head. _Same question._

“I don’t like to sleep when I can’t hear danger coming,” Zuko said. “I can get by without.”

Aang frowned. He started counting on his fingers, and held up six of them at Zuko: _you haven’t slept in six days?!_

“I’m fine,” Zuko said. “I’ve gone longer.”

The last time he’d gone this long without sleep had been on the raft, drifting away from the Northern Water Tribe. It had been a very unpleasant two weeks.

Aang looked down, then back up at Zuko. From inside of his shirt, he produced his lemur, who blinked at Zuko sleepily. He pointed at the lemur’s ears, and held him out to Zuko.

Zuko backed up a step. _Noooo, thank you._

Aang tilted his head to the side again and blinked at him. _Please?_

Zuko rolled his eyes and accepted the lemur. _Fine._

It squirmed in his hands. Aang pushed Zuko’s hands toward his chest so that the lemur was cradled against him, which made it stop squirming.

Zuko followed Aang back to the camp and laid down on his bedroll, pulling his blanket over himself and curling up as small as he could.

He watched the lemur for a while. It was contentedly snoozing in his arms, ears twitching every so often.

Well…with ears that big, surely it would hear any trouble coming long before Zuko could see it. And with it tucked under the blanket, they would both be warm and he’d definitely know if it tried to escape.

He pulled the blanket over his head and used his firebreath to get it good and toasty. The lemur stretched out happily. Zuko drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Two days later, they ran out of rations. Unlike higher on the mountain, the lychee berries at their elevation had long since ripened and seemed to be fermenting on their bushes, so they were no good for eating. (Zuko tried it one morning and spent the rest of the day unsuccessfully trying to get the taste out of his mouth.)

As they drifted, Katara and Sokka tried to fish the river. Sokka had made himself a pole and hook, and Katara was scooping large quantities of water out of the river and filtering the muck out of them to check for fish.

Neither of them were having much success.

Finally, Zuko got out the map, got Sokka’s attention, and tapped on Jang Hui. It was only a couple miles downstream, and as a decent-sized village, they almost certainly would have food available to buy.

Sokka disagreed, pointing at his schedule. There was not a marked lunch break. Zuko was unimpressed. He held up their meager remaining supply of food, which consisted of a few dried spices and a bit of flour and rice.

Appa crawled out of the river mid-afternoon and flew them to a hillside near a cliff, where they set up camp.

Zuko pulled up his hood and accompanied the rest of the group to Jang Hui. At the shoreline, they met a man who agreed to ferry them across.

After a short ride, they climbed onto the dock.

Zuko’s first thought was that there was something very, very wrong with this town.

Nobody was there. Where there should have been a local marketplace – at least occupied if not bustling – there was a single dilapidated stall advertising fish and clams.

Katara was arguing with Sokka, pointing at the few visible villagers, who looked hungry and tired. She pointed at the river. Sokka pointed at the rolled-up schedule, which he was keeping on him at all times so that he could show it off whenever they deviated from it.

The man who had rowed them over vanished, only to reappear behind the counter of the market stall wearing different clothes. Zuko looked at him skeptically.

After a squabble over the man’s identity, Sokka bought a few fish; Katara slipped one of them into a small child’s hands on their way out. Zuko pretended not to notice.

That evening, after they’d eaten, Sokka brought out the schedule and squinted at it. He made a few adjustments, tapped the name of the next town, and asked the group a question. Everyone nodded in agreement. Zuko took that to mean that they were moving on in the morning.

Later, as they huddled around the campfire, Katara wrote out what had happened in the village. Dock, the man who had rowed them across, had reintroduced himself as Xu when he was behind the counter. Apparently they were brothers.

Zuko thought that was pretty strange, but harmless enough.

The lemur slept in his arms, which was starting to become a habit. He easily got six hours of sleep and woke a full hour before dawn, feeling unusually well-rested.

Deciding he’d like to go over his forms while he had the chance – sitting in a saddle all day was tiring, even if it was a large saddle – he got up, walked around up to the top of the cliff, and stretched.

Midway through his third form, he realized that someone else was awake. Katara was giving Appa food from a cloth bag. She usually wasn’t up that early, but it didn’t seem worth the effort it would take to ask her about it.

Instead, he finished his forms as the sun rose and walked back to camp to pack up his things.

He made tea over the fire as he waited for the others to wake up. The lemur insisted on climbing inside of his tunic and curling up there, enjoying both his body heat and the warmth from the fire.

Zuko rolled his eyes, but allowed it.

Katara had a cup of tea and gestured to her waterskin and him. He nodded, and she stood next to him.

He would have liked to say he was used to the chill of the healing sessions by now, but he wasn’t. By the time that one was over, he was very grateful for the lemur, the tea, and the fire.

And then the others were awake, and they were getting ready to go, except that Appa wasn’t moving.

He didn’t look so good. His tongue was purple, and he didn’t seem to want to move. The lemur tried to lick his tongue before Aang pulled it away. Katara didn't have any medicine for purple-tongue-disease and she didn't want to try to heal him when she didn't really know what was wrong, so they walked back to the shore to go to Jang Hui.

Dock shuttled them across again. When they reached the floating village, the marketplace had completely changed. It was full of people, and they looked much happier than the day before. A kid spotted them and waved. Katara waved back.

Even though they looked a lot happier, the people apparently had no medicine available. Guessing by the dirty looks the large building just upstream was getting, it was all going to the factory.

When they stopped at Xu’s food stand, he told them quite a bit. Zuko hoped somebody had memorized it well enough to tell him later, because it seemed interesting based on the looks on everyone’s faces.

Then he sold them a two-headed fish. Katara and Zuko shared a disgusted look at that. _Just what is in the water here that could make a fish grow two heads?_

With no better option, they went back to camp with their two-headed fish and no medicine.

Although the concept of eating two-headed fish was disgusting, in practice, it tasted just fine. Katara used the last of their rice to make it into a good soup, delicious and a large enough batch for them all to have second servings. Zuko found himself missing the plentiful food stocks aboard the _Wani_ and the _Ika_.

“What did Xu tell you earlier? Did he know why the villagers were so happy today?” Zuko asked.

Katara nodded and grabbed the parchment. She wrote, _There’s a local legend about the Painted Lady. She’s a river spirit who helps them in times of need. Xu said that last night, she came and gave food to all of the villagers._

He hadn’t heard of the Painted Lady in his studies. Of course, it had been a few years, and she was probably a very local spirit. He’d been slated to study the legends of each Fire Nation island in depth when he was fourteen, but that obviously hadn’t happened.

“We should leave her an offering,” Zuko said, looking at the last portion of soup in the pot.

Aang nodded and spoke, glancing toward Appa. _She might heal him._

Well, that also might happen, but Zuko was more concerned about not offending her and getting spirit-murdered in the night. Uncle _always_ left offerings for local spirits, and he was one of the most spirit-attuned people in the entire Fire Nation.

Aang and Zuko left a bowl of soup by the riverside. Sokka rolled his eyes.

When Zuko went to lie down on his bedroll, the lemur was waiting expectantly for him. He curled up around it and pulled up the blanket. The lemur vibrated rhythmically. _Is it purring? It must be. I didn't know lemurs could purr._

He woke up to the lemur patting his face. _Ugh!_ He shoved its paws away, but it was insistent.

Zuko opened his eyes reluctantly. The fire was down to coals, and the moon was high.

And Katara wasn’t on her bedroll.

“Is that why you woke me up?” he whispered to the lemur. “She’s allowed to go pee, you know. I don’t care.”

It looked annoyed at his dismissal.

But when Katara wasn’t back twenty minutes later, he began to think. And then he got up, because he was awake anyway and he might as well act like it.

Acting on instinct, he snuck down to the riverside. There was a thick fog rolling in, strangely fast. Or maybe not strangely fast, because there was Katara, summoning it from the bank about twenty feet upstream of him.

She was wearing a lot of face paint. In fact, she might even have been wearing enough face paint to be called a painted lady.

Okay. So Katara was impersonating a spirit. Zuko sent out a silent prayer of apology to whatever vengeful local river spirits might have been watching them.

He watched her walk across the river, confident in each step, and disappear onto the floating village.

It took a few hours for her to come back. When she did, she purified some water from the river and started to rinse her makeup off. Zuko hurried back to camp and curled up on his bedroll. Katara came back a few minutes later and visited Appa – feeding him out of that bag again – before going back to sleep.

He tried to look surprised when Appa was declared still sick the next morning. He thought he did okay.

They went to the village, where Dock/Xu (who, Zuko was pretty sure, were in fact the same person) told them about the Painted Lady coming in the night to heal the sick and injured. And then they bought some clams that, frankly, looked like they had absorbed all of the pollution in the river.

Sokka rolled his eyes at a few points during the story. When they wandered through the village, marveling at how much happier the people there seemed, he pointed at the factory and he and Aang compared explosion-y hand gestures. Zuko thought he understood. Unless the Painted Lady kept coming back, nothing would change as long as the factory was still polluting the waters and taking their medicine.

Katara got a look in her eyes that Zuko found a bit alarming.

That night, after their sad clam soup, he lied down on his bedroll but didn’t go to sleep. Sure enough, after an hour or so, Katara got up, stuffed her sleeping bag with hay, grabbed a bundle of clothing, and left for the river.

Zuko followed her, giving her enough time to change into her Painted Lady costume. In his absence, the lemur glided over to Aang.

He watched Katara waterbend the pollution out of the water to apply her makeup. When she was done, she stowed her normal clothes by a tree near the camp and walked by it, glancing over to make sure she hadn’t woken the others.

That was when Aang woke up.

He seemed excited because, Agni help them all, he thought Katara was _actually_ the Painted Lady.

Katara made for the riverside, quickly getting up the hill, but Aang was an airbender and not easily dodged. Zuko followed behind, watching them. Aang bounced along, pointed back at Appa, apparently asking for the Painted Lady to heal him.

She made it all the way to the riverside dock before Aang got her to stop. He ran directly into a pole along the way (Zuko cringed) but seemed unperturbed.

Katara turned to face him. Aang took off his headband, pointed at his arrow, and spoke to her earnestly.

They had a short conversation, and then Aang used a blast of air to flip up Katara’s veil.

At that point, based on Aang’s horrified expression, he recognized her. But his expression quickly went from that to excited, and he bounced _more_ as Katara gestured at the village.

Zuko chose that point to show himself. He walked onto the dock. “Oh, are we doing this together now?” he asked.

Katara and Aang stared at him.

“You knew?” Katara asked, using the sort-of-signs they’d been relying on.

He nodded. “What’s tonight’s mission?”

Katara grinned in a way that made him uneasy.

Once they’d gotten just downstream of the factory, courtesy of Katara’s waterbending, she pulled the fog in again so they could sneak past the guards.

“Katara, take those barrels down,” Zuko signed. “Aang, break the pipes. I’ll find the flammable chemicals.”

They both stared at him. He repeated the signs, slowly, and nudged them in the right directions until they got it.

A quick search of the factory storage revealed _lots_ of flammables, including a full barrel of blasting jelly. He took the barrel and rolled it toward the center of the factory, where it would do the most structural damage.

When he returned, Katara and Aang had done their jobs. Zuko superheated a lump of metal, and Aang used airbending to set it gently on top of the blasting jelly barrel. It started to burn through the wood immediately, and they all bolted for the exit.

They were just a few meters away from the factory when it blew. The force of the explosion threw them onto the dock, but Zuko managed to catch Katara’s arm before she skidded into the water. (Aang caught himself. Airbenders were self-sufficient that way.)

“Let’s go, before everyone wakes up,” Zuko said. Downstream in the village, lights were already beginning to turn on as people were woken by the explosion.

They hurried back to the campsite as the sky lightened. Aang was somehow still bouncy, jumping in circles around them and recounting the tale.

Sokka and Toph looked asleep, thankfully. Aang and Zuko waited behind the bushes while Katara retrieved her bundle of clothes and changed back into them quickly just outside of the campsite.

As they approached, they saw that Sokka was standing by the fire, waiting for them. He didn’t look happy. Toph was standing beside him, impatiently tapping her foot.

Whatever excuse Katara offered up, Sokka didn’t buy it. He and Toph stuck out their tongues, displaying that they, like Appa, were suffering from purple-tongue-disease. Or, more accurately, that they’d been eating purple berries from Katara’s stash.

Katara looked mad. Sokka brought out the schedule and yelled about it for a while, so loud that Zuko could actually hear him every so often.

And then, when he was done lecturing, Sokka pointed west. _Leaving now._

Zuko packed up his things and tossed them into Appa’s saddle.

As they were loading the cooking supplies, Toph suddenly froze. She looked toward the river curiously. Zuko looked too, and oh no, _that was bad._

“Sokka” he hissed, trying not to be too loud. “Sokka!”

“What?” Sokka said.

Zuko pointed at the platoon of Fire Nation soldiers heading for the village at top speed on fast, two-person boats.

Sokka rounded on Katara immediately. Zuko watched their back-and-forth. He glanced at Toph, who made a gesture indicating an explosion.

Sokka wanted to leave. Katara refused. She stormed toward the riverside, evidently intent on fighting the platoon by herself.

Well, not really by herself. Zuko followed her, because he had been the one who _actually_ blew up the factory, which meant that it was technically his fault. He should have known better than to assume that they could just blow it up with no consequences. The Fire Nation army didn’t take kindly to sabotage.

It would be fine. They’d live, probably, and then they could catch up with Sokka and the others at the next town. They’d need to make it to the sea and catch a ferry to the next island, but it was all doable.

Except Sokka was coming with them, apparently, and so were Aang and Toph and Appa.

And, even better, Sokka had a _plan._

Zuko’s role was pretty simple: keep the army from blowing things up and provide defense as necessary.

As the soldiers forced the villagers to gather on the front dock, Aang used waterbending to ferry himself and Zuko, following Katara in the fog. Zuko decided that however much he hated flying, this was much worse. The water felt _squishy_ under him, even though he wasn’t getting wet and it was supporting him.

Zuko watched as the commander lit a dock on fire and had his soldiers tear down an entire house. It slid into the murky water and vanished, like it had never been built.

When the commander had his firebenders light a cannonball on fire, Zuko concentrated, reached out, and snatched the fire away, allowing it to die. He repeated the act a second later, and the soldiers milled around, confused.

The fog reached the dock. Zuko could feel faint vibrations as Toph slammed earth down, creating footsteps. Zuko and Aang hid under the dock, hanging from the beams and peering up through the gaps.

“Wait,” Zuko signed to Aang, who had been about to airbend at the soldiers.

Katara rushed toward the dock. She threw two boats into the cliffside, exploding them.

The commander, who reminded Zuko of Zhao, stepped forward to challenge her. He was a firebender, and a confident one.

He struck with a spinning knife-hand and crescent kick, sending flames whirling toward Katara. Zuko pushed them down, and Aang threw Katara up into the air. She took it elegantly, landing lightly in the water, as Aang broke the dock and sent Zhao flailing into the muddy water.

Katara approached Zhao, who fled with his soldiers on their remaining boats. Sokka and Toph rowed out to meet them as the villagers started to cheer for Katara.

Aang, Sokka, and Toph stood on the side of the dock, just out of the way. Zuko climbed over to the canoe and sat in that.

He was all for helping the villagers, but he _wasn’t_ in league with the Avatar. He couldn’t be. And letting the Fire Nation people think that, even though they probably already did, just wasn’t something he could do.

It was going nicely, until Katara’s makeup started to run and Dock recognized her. Sokka defended her, and Katara spoke for herself. Toph snuck into the crowd and called out ideas until the villagers were excited enough to mobilize themselves.

They stuck around for the rest of the day to help the villagers clean the river, sifting out the mud with Katara’s help. Zuko stuck with Toph, avoiding the villagers’ gazes.

It would take it a few days for the silt to settle out, and months before the fish returned, but Zuko was certain that the river would heal itself with the villagers’ help.

He wondered if the villagers would ever reach out to the upstream village. With that factory still intact, the river would never return to its former state.

(Hoping that they would help blow up that village’s factory was a treasonous thought, but they had been _starving._ Wasn’t giving them their lives back more important than losing a couple munitions factories?)

They floated downstream on Appa, watching as the village faded from sight. Aang tapped Zuko’s shoulder. He wrote down a question on the parchment.

His handwriting was atrocious.

_When we were under the dock and in the factory, you used fancy hand signals. Where did you learn them?_

“They’re called signing. It’s an entire language,” Zuko said. “Uncle taught me. It’s easier than listening and speaking for me since my hearing is bad.”

Aang made a thoughtful face. Then he looked up at Zuko, eyes bright, and wrote, _Can you teach us?_

“Why?” Zuko asked.

 _So that we can talk to you better,_ Aang wrote.

“Um – sure, I guess. If you really want to,” Zuko said. Nobody had ever offered to learn before. Uncle had forcibly taught Zuko, and most of the _Wani_ crew had eventually picked up what they needed to understand Zuko’s commands.

Aang nodded enthusiastically, and the others scooted over to sit beside him, looking at him expectantly.

They _all_ wanted to learn?

Uncle had taught Zuko his first signs by refusing to speak to him in anything but sign language. He hadn’t wanted to, at first, but the immersion approach had worked well once he’d gotten over his own issues.

“Hello,” Zuko signed. “My name is Zuko.” He spelled his name out letter by letter, and then pointed at Aang. “Your name is Aang.”

Aang, Katara, and Sokka imitated his signs, frowning in concentration. Toph set her hands on Katara’s, feeling out the movements, and then imitated them herself.

Zuko smiled.

It took two full weeks of regular healing sessions for Zuko to regain most of the hearing on his right side. Eventually, Katara conceded that she couldn’t fix any more than she already had.

Zuko could live with that. He could hear most of what was happening, at least.

They’d spent those weeks training and traveling, camping in a new spot every few nights. Sokka eventually gave up on his cave requirement, which made it easier to find safe places to stay.

One evening, they lied out under the stars, on a hill in between towns. The Mizugame meteor shower was lighting up the night sky with fiery flares. Appa was snoring gently, uninterested in the sky’s theatrics.

Zuko had watched the Mizugames before, but they seemed unusually bright this year. Each one flared like a miniature sun, so close that he could almost feel their heat.

Momo, who had been circling overhead, dropped onto his chest with a thump and curled up under Zuko’s chin.

Aang tapped him. Zuko turned to him.

“How come Momo likes to sleep on you so much?” Aang signed slowly.

“Firebenders are warmer than most humans,” Zuko signed back. Aang nodded thoughtfully, and then turned back to the sky.

“Kind of makes you realize how insignificant we are,” Sokka said aloud.

Toph made a snarky remark. Zuko rubbed Momo’s head; the lemur trilled in appreciation before settling into a relaxed purr.

“Wait, look at that one,” Katara said, pointing. It was closer than the others and seemed to be moving faster. It flared so brightly that Zuko had to shield his eyes. He stood up along with the others and watched it tear through the sky.

This time, he _actually_ felt its heat as it flew by.

It hit beyond the next hill with a boom, sending great tremors through the earth. They ran to the crest of the hill and looked down into the newly formed crater. Its edges were still glowing, and the trees around it were starting to catch on fire.

“The fire is gonna destroy that town!” Katara said.

“Not if we stop it first!” Sokka said, already running toward Appa.

Zuko wished that firefighting had been part of his curriculum at the Royal Academy, but that sort of thing was generally left to enlisted nonbenders.

As it was, he felt pretty useless. Katara flew overhead on Appa, bending water from a creek, and Aang and Toph used earthbending to smother entire sections of the fire.

“What should I do?” called Sokka from beside Zuko.

“Watch Momo!” Aang said, blowing a particularly nasty flare away from him and Toph.

Momo landed on Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka pet him.

“Hey, can’t you firebend the fire out?” Sokka asked Zuko.

“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t think anybody knows how to do that,” Zuko said. “I can try to slow it down.”

“Do it,” Sokka said. Momo left his shoulder and swooped down to land on an ember that had been threatening to light the grass. (Sokka looked kind of depressed as he followed the lemur.)

Zuko knelt in seiza. He closed his eyes and felt the fire in front of him. _Listen to me,_ he thought, matching its rhythm in his breathing.

It was wild, out of control. It wanted to consume the hillside, and the town, and the forest.

He slowed his breathing slightly. Reluctantly, the fire followed suit. He pressed it back until it was no longer gaining ground, only holding.

It fought back against his hold, trying to escape his grasp. He pushed back just as fiercely. _No. No more._

And then it was gone, smothered and drowned and blown out.

Zuko’s eyes snapped open and he gasped for breath. _Okay, lesson learned. Don’t get too invested in fires that are about to be put out._

Once he’d recovered, he stood up. The newly formed crater was dark, only glowing at the very edges. Somehow, Sokka had wound up in a pile of snow. He shook it off, looking irritated, as Appa landed.

“Good work, everybody,” Aang said.

“Nice job holding it back, sparky,” Toph added. “You good?”

Zuko nodded. “I’ll be okay. Fire’s a two-way connection.”

“You felt it when it went out?” Aang asked. “What was it like?”

_Like being yanked downwards by your backbone._

“It just knocked the wind out of me,” Zuko said.

They slept leaning on Appa for the night, too exhausted to set up a proper camp. The next day, they went and ate lunch in town. Zuko felt out of place, with his hood covering half of his face, but it was the best way to avoid recognition.

“These people almost got burned last night and none of them know,” Aang said, dropping his chopsticks to sign along.

“Yeah, the worst thing about being in disguise is that we don’t get the hero worship anymore,” Toph said mournfully. “I miss the love.”

Sokka muttered something under his breath. He turned half away as the rest of them stared at him.

“What’s your problem? You haven’t even touched your smoked sea-slug,” Katara said, poking at it with her chopsticks.

Sokka sighed. “It’s just…you all do amazing things. Using bending to put out forest fires, and flying around, and making other things fly around. I can’t do any of that. I can’t _do_ anything.”

“That’s not true,” Katara protested. “No one can read a map like you.” (Zuko could read a map as well as Sokka, probably, but that was beside the point. It was Sokka’s _thing_. He was the map-and-schedule guy.)

“I can’t read at all,” Toph chipped in.

“If it weren’t for you, I would have captured him–” Zuko jabbed his chopsticks at Aang. “–a long time ago.”

“Yeah, and who keeps us laughing with sarcastic comments all the time?” Aang said, grinning. “I mean, look at Katara’s hair, right? What is _up_ with that?”

Zuko scooted his chair away from Aang.

“What? What’s wrong with my hair?” Katara asked, looking a little pissed off.

“Um, nothing, I was just trying to – uh,” Aang said, stumbling.

“Look, I appreciate the effort, but the fact is each of you is so amazing and so special and I'm not,” Sokka said, spinning his chopsticks idly in one hand. “I'm just the guy in the group who's regular.”

Katara stood up and walked around the table to Sokka’s spot. “I'm sorry you're feeling so down, but I hope you know that none of us see you that way.” She paused, thinking. “I know something that's going to make you feel better.”

“You do?” Sokka said dully.

Katara grinned, and that was how they found themselves in the town market.

“Shopping!” Sokka said, his worries forgotten at least for the moment. He ran into a weapons shop, with the rest of them close behind. “Ooooh, look at _these._ ” He picked up a pair of nunchaku and swung them experimentally. Zuko fought to keep his face neutral as Sokka smacked himself in the head and fell into a pile of clattering weapons.

Zuko went to investigate the shop’s swords. The sword he’d taken from the navy scout was okay, but he really missed his dao. They fit his fighting style, and their balance had been amazing. Earth Kingdom swordsmiths knew what they were doing, unlike the mass production factories the Fire Nation navy was currently employing.

They had made every sword by hand, until the Hundred Year War started.

The shop had a few nice swords, but no dao. Zuko considered trading in his sword for a slightly less battered one, but it would be expensive, and they didn’t have that much money.

Anyways, they’d gone shopping for Sokka, not him. Zuko put the sword he’d been looking at back, and glanced over at him. He was staring up at the wall of swords, focused on one close to the ceiling.

When the shopkeeper took it down to show it off, Zuko realized that he recognized the insignia on the scabbard.

“You have a good eye,” the shopkeeper said to Sokka. “This is an original from Piandao, the greatest swordsmaster and swordsmith in Fire Nation history. Actually, he lives in the big castle up the road from here. That’s why I have this one. They’re rare, these days.”

“That’s it!” Aang said. “Sokka, that’s what you’ve needed all along.”

“The sword?” Sokka asked, glancing at the price tag and cringing.

“Not the sword, a master. We’ve all had masters to teach us. You should see if you can study with Piandao,” Aang said enthusiastically.

Zuko tried to picture Sokka (who was brash, loud, and highly distractible) studying under Master Piandao (who, when Zuko had known him, had been focused, typically silent, and strategic in everything he did). He failed.

“That's a great idea,” Katara said. “I could've never gotten to where I am without Master Pakku. Everyone needs a teacher.”

“I learned from badger-moles. They don't talk, but they're still good teachers,” Toph said. No wonder she was so damn good at earthbending.

“It would be nice to be a master sword fighter. All right, I'll talk to him,” Sokka agreed. He put the sword back and they left the shop.

Asking around got them directions to Master Piandao’s home. Sokka set off alone, and the rest of them went back to the meteorite to set up a more permanent camp in the crater.

Toph earthbent them some walls to work with, and Zuko and Katara gathered grass and sticks to make a temporary roof. After that, Zuko went to check the creek, which was thankfully flowing clean even after the previous night’s fire.

When he got back to camp, Appa was napping under the shelter. Toph, Katara, and Aang were lying down in the middle of the camp, staring up at the sky. Zuko sat down to stretch.

“What should we do for the rest of the day?” Aang asked.

“I’m tapped out,” said Toph. “I already picked my toes twice.”

“Twice?”

Katara sighed. “Sokka's been in charge of the schedule. I'm not sure what we should be doing.”

“We could read the schedule,” Zuko suggested. “Or train, or see if there’s any food in the woods.”

“It’s so hot today, though,” Toph said. (Zuko didn’t think it was _that_ hot. It was a bit warm in the sun, but there was a breeze on the hilltop that kept it from being too much.)

“How hot is it?” Aang asked, clearly waiting for a sarcastic remark. He’d started to sign even when Zuko wasn’t part of conversations, which was…nice, maybe? That seemed right. It was nice.

Toph shrugged.

Katara said, “Okay, it’s so hot that…that Momo’s shedding like Appa!”

“I guess the jokes don't run in the family,” Aang said.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Katara said.

Zuko rolled his eyes and went up to the hilltop to practice his forms. He went through the ones he knew well twice each, and then worked on perfecting his most advanced two for an hour or so.

They hadn’t moved by the time he got back. Zuko dug through the messy pile of stuff on Appa’s saddle, which they’d set by the cliffside to give Appa a break, and found the schedule.

The scroll was far longer than Zuko was tall. It was color-coded, but there was no legend, and the writing was so small that he had to squint to decipher it.

“Katara, what day is it by the Water Tribe calendar?” he asked. She told him, and he eventually found it slightly less than halfway down the list.

Sokka had written his schedule in code, apparently. Each character was neatly written, but the notes made no sense to Zuko.

“Okay. We’re supposed to be doing orange, yellow, and blue,” he reported. “Does anyone know what those mean?”

He got three shrugs in response.

Zuko spent the rest of the afternoon tromping through the woods, searching for a really good stick. He found one by the time it was dusk, and was back at camp by the time the moon came up.

Momo came and found him as soon as he was lying down on his bedroll.

The next afternoon, as Zuko was sitting and whittling the bark and sharp edges off of his new hiking stick, Aang and Katara got out Sokka’s map and tried to figure out where they were and where they were supposed to go next. Zuko watched in amusement as they argued over what direction north was, which arrow on the compass rose was supposed to point north, and what island they were on.

(He knew all of those things, but they seemed to be having fun debating.)

“I miss Sokka,” Toph said loudly. “You noodle-brains don't know what you're doing.”

“Oh, got one!” Katara said. “If you miss Sokka so much, why don’t you marry him?” Toph made a face and rolled over so her back was to them.

Zuko caught Aang’s eye and signed, “Does Toph like Sokka?”

Aang made a very disturbed face and replied, “I don’t know.”

For a group of kids who were trying to disrupt the entire world order, Zuko was finding that they were surprisingly ordinary. Aang liked Katara. Katara liked Aang. Toph liked Sokka. None of them would do anything about it. (Zuko could sympathize with Toph, at least. Sokka _was_ sort of hot, in a scrawny Water Tribe sort of way.)

As the sun set, Katara and Aang gave up on the map in favor of dinner, which was sort-of-fried rice made with fresh vegetables from the town market. It was slightly burnt, but delicious nonetheless.

They were all lying on their bedrolls, not yet asleep, when Toph suddenly sat up. “Hey, Sokka’s back!”

Sure enough, Sokka came over the hill a few seconds later, already grinning. Katara, Toph, and Aang rushed over to hug him.

“We missed you so much!” Katara said.

“Say something funny!” Aang demanded.

“Funny how?” Sokka asked, which was enough to send Aang and Katara into fits of laughter. Toph smiled and stepped to the side.

“What’s their deal?” Sokka asked her, glancing over at them.

“Dunno,” Toph said. “Guess they missed you or something. _I_ didn’t care.”

“Thanks. That warms my heart,” Sokka said, not seeming bothered at all. “Anyway, I need some help. I need to bring the meteorite to Piandao’s house.”

So they pushed the meteorite _three entire miles_ to Piandao’s doorstep. Toph did most of the work, manipulating the earth below the meteorite so that it was always rolling downhill, but Zuko, Sokka, Katara, and Aang had to push it too.

Sokka didn’t even give them an explanation. By the time they got there, it was dawn. He ran up to the door and knocked loudly.

Zuko put his hood up. The door opened, and Piandao stood there. His hair had turned from jet black to dark grey since Zuko had last seen him, but he moved with the same fluidity and purpose that Zuko remembered.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“Oh, these are my friends,” Sokka said. “Just other good Fire Nation folks.”

They bowed to Piandao. Zuko realized, too late, that he’d been the only one to bow with his hands in the correct form. Piandao’s gaze lingered on him for a second before snapping back to Sokka.

“Do you think we can make a sword out of a meteorite?” Sokka asked, and _oh,_ that’s what it was for. Of course. Piandao had always loved smithing.

“We'll make a sword unlike any other in the world,” Piandao said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. 

Zuko had never seen Piandao smile when he’d worked in the palace.

Piandao’s home was beautiful. It was a sprawling house, perched on the hilltop overlooking distant mountains. He and the others wandered around, following Sokka as he chiselled and melted and forged under Piandao’s careful watch.

Finally, when the day was nearly over, the sword was finished. Piandao’s aide invited them to the back courtyard, and they sat behind the railing. Sokka knelt before Piandao.

Piandao spoke quietly, for Sokka’s ears alone. He unsheathed the meteorite sword. It was beautiful, as black as lava rock and elegantly forged.

Sokka accepted the sword when Piandao presented it to him, but he looked ashamed. He said, loudly enough for them all to hear him, “I'm not who you think I am. I'm not from the Fire Nation. I'm from the Southern Water Tribe. I lied so that I could learn swordsmanship from you. I'm sorry.”

Piandao sighed. “I’m sorry, too.”

He drew his sword and swung at Sokka, who jumped to his feet and parried the blow in one smooth motion.

Zuko drew his own sword, standing up with the others, but Sokka held up a hand. “No,” he said. “This is my fight, alone.”

It would be dishonorable for them to intervene. Zuko sheathed his sword and watched tensely as they dueled.

Sokka was _really good._ In just a couple of days, he’d learned as much about sword fighting as Zuko had in nearly two years of continuous instruction. He used the terrain, pulling back bamboo shoots and releasing them as distractions so he could get a moment’s advantage.

Piandao swept at Sokka’s legs, forcing him to jump into an attack.

Zuko watched, now curious. _Master Piandao isn’t fighting at full strength. Why?_

It wasn’t a lack of ability; of that, he was certain. Piandao was swinging full force, and parrying at full speed. But if he had been manipulating the fight in the way that had earned him his mastery, Sokka would have lost already.

“Excellent,” Piandao said as Sokka rolled toward a retaining wall.

Something very strange was happening.

A moment later, Sokka flung dirt into Piandao’s eyes (which was not proper sword fighting and a serious violation of most codes of conduct related to dueling) and Piandao _smiled,_ shutting his eyes and listening for Sokka’s next move.

Sokka tried to sneak back toward Zuko and the others, but stepped on a twig, alerting Piandao, who immediately went on the offensive, this time not holding back.

Ten seconds later, Sokka’s sword was twenty feet away in the dirt, Piandao’s sword was at Sokka’s throat, and Aang, Katara, and Toph were in their bending stances, ready to jump into the fight.

Piandao, eyes still shut, stepped back and signaled to his aide, who threw him his scabbard. He caught it on his blade, sheathing the sword.

“I think I'm a little old to be fighting the Avatar,” he said calmly.

Aang blinked. “How did you know?”

They walked over to Piandao, who rinsed the dirt out of his eyes and looked at them with an amused expression. “Oh, I've been around awhile. You pick things up. Of course, I knew from the beginning that Sokka was Water Tribe.”

“You used your real name?” Zuko asked. Sokka looked sheepish.

“You might want to try Lee as a cover name. There are a million Lees,” Piandao suggested, and Zuko’s head was starting to hurt. _Piandao’s helping them. Is he on the Avatar’s side? Could Piandao be a traitor?_

But also, Lee was _his_ cover name, and Sokka couldn’t have it. “That’s my name. I’m Lee.”

“Ah. Then perhaps another name would be better,” Piandao said.

“But why would you agree to train someone from the Water Tribe?” Katara asked, and yeah, that was a question Zuko would like him to answer.

“The way of the sword doesn't belong to any one nation. Knowledge of the arts belongs to us all,” Piandao said. He picked up the meteorite sword and handed it back to Sokka. “Sokka, you must continue your training on your own. If you stay on this path, I know that one day you will become an even greater master than I am.”

“Thank you, master,” Sokka said, bowing and accepting the sword.

“My friend, will you take our guests inside and provide refreshments?”

His aide, whose name Zuko probably should have picked up by now, nodded.

“Lee, will you step into my office for a moment?” Piandao asked as they went inside.

_Does he know?_

Zuko followed him into his office.

“Did you think that I would not recognize my most determined student, even if he covered his face?” Piandao said conversationally. He rummaged around in a basket and pulled out a scroll, sealed lumpily with plain wax.

Zuko knelt and pushed his hood back. “Master, it’s been so long,” he said, suddenly conscious of just how much had changed since he’d last seen Piandao. His life had been upended at least twice over, and Zuko himself…well, he’d certainly changed, too.

“Prince Zuko, I am gratified to know that you are alive and free,” Piandao said. He tossed Zuko a Pai Sho tile.

It was a lotus.

Zuko looked up at him, mouth open to ask the first of his many, many questions, but Piandao cut him off.

“We don’t have much time, my prince. This is from your uncle,” he said, pulling Zuko to his feet and handing him the scroll. “Open it when the time is right.”

“Uncle? He’s – is he okay, did he escape?” Zuko asked hopefully, holding the scroll like it might break if he handled it too roughly.

Piandao shook his head. “Sending this was all he could do, I think.”

“I’m not a prince anymore,” Zuko said. “Haven’t you seen the wanted posters?” It was supposed to come off as a joke, but he lost momentum and it mostly sounded sad.

“Prince Zuko, you are the best hope for our nation,” Piandao said. “No _poster_ can change that. Give me your sword.”

Zuko handed him the stolen sword. Piandao frowned disapprovingly as he checked the balance and examined the chipped edges.

“This isn’t a sword worthy of you. What weapon did you carry in the Earth Kingdom? There were rumors of your presence there.”

“Dual dao, master.”

Piandao paused. He smiled. “That suits you well. Did you continue your practice after I left?”

“When I could.”

“Good. Don’t stop. You’ll need all the skills you can get.” He opened a cabinet and pulled out a set of dao. “I hope these will serve you well.”

“Thank you,” Zuko said, replacing the short sword’s scabbard on his belt with the dao. He tucked the scroll into his tunic. “Master, what is the mission of the Order of the White Lotus?”

Piandao said, “I think you already know that. Come, we should join your friends.”

They went back into the hallway. Before they entered the room where the others were, Piandao stopped.

“Prince Zuko, I know it’s been many years since I was your master,” Piandao said softly, “but you’ve grown into a young man any teacher would be very proud of.”

Zuko blinked, eyes suddenly burning, and hugged Piandao. To his surprise, Piandao hugged back, and they stayed there for a moment before rejoining the others.

The group stayed for an hour longer before moving on. Sokka was adamant about getting back on schedule after their unscheduled three-day-long break.

As they walked back to camp, Aang asked, “Hey, Zuko, what did Piandao want to talk to you about?”

Zuko hesitated. “He gave me this,” he said, handing Aang the Pai Sho tile. “Uncle is part of a group called the White Lotus, and I think Piandao is too.”

“Huh,” Katara said, looking at the tile. “It’s a lotus surrounding the Fire Nation symbol. I wonder what it means.”

Zuko shrugged. “I’ll have to ask Uncle, when I see him again. I don’t know much about it.”

Once they reached camp, they packed quickly, and Appa took off as the sun was setting in a blaze of fiery orange and red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko, realizing that Katara has been impersonating a spirit: _this is fine_


	5. The Beach | The Avatar and the Firelord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd as my beta has been unavailable. Please forgive any errors.
> 
> Tw for severe injury/death at the hands of Combustion Man (collateral damage, not anyone in the Gaang). Skip from _There was someone lying on the other side of it._ to _“Zuko?” Aang said._
> 
> Dogeza: “kowtow” bowing, used to show extreme deference or shame. (Canon example: Zuko during the Agni Kai with his father.)

They ended up skipping the next few towns to make up for lost time. Zuko looked down toward the ground as they flew over them, but there was nothing visible except fog.

Sokka pointed them toward the next island and they flew until Appa started to falter, struggling to fight the crosswind.

“Appa’s getting too tired,” Aang called back to them. “We have to land. I think I see a good spot up here.”

Appa landed, crunching gravel under his feet. Sokka hopped out, looked around, and signaled to Aang, who blew away the fog they’d been traveling with.

Zuko slid down Appa’s side. They had landed in a crater with a small lake; it was milky turquoise, but he thought it was probably a natural effect and not from pollution. The wind whistled past the crater’s jagged edges, but it wasn’t as bad inside of the crater. The morning sun was bright, and the black gravel was sending up warmth.

“Hey, this is really nice,” Aang said cheerfully. “Appa could use a rest for a few hours, after that flight. Beach day!”

“Let’s set up camp first,” Katara said. Zuko helped her put up the tents and found some dried grass, but no wood for a fire.

“We’ll have to go without a campfire tonight,” Sokka said with a shrug. “It’s doable. We did it all the time, back home. You don’t always want to start a fire when you’re living on an ice sheet, you know. It melts things. _Important_ things. Like the floor.”

“It’s gonna get really cold,” Toph said.

Sokka, Katara, and Aang looked skeptical. Zuko wasn’t sure their definitions of cold were the same as any sane person’s. At least Toph and Momo understood.

The second that the camp was completely set up, Aang stripped down to his trunks and ran up the side of the crater, airbending himself as high as he could, and kicked off from it. He did a backflip and hit the water with a clap, sending a wave of water toward Zuko and the others.

Toph stomped, shielding herself with a wall of black rock. Katara made a bubble around herself and Momo. Sokka and Zuko weren’t so lucky.

The water hit Zuko like a slap. He sputtered, gasping as it soaked him. The water wasn’t particularly cold – it was actually a bit warm – but the wind immediately made him start to shiver.

A few feet away, Sokka yelped indignantly. His hair, having escaped its tie, hung to the sides sadly and dripped.

“Oops,” Aang said. “Sorry!”

He didn’t look particularly apologetic. Zuko threw up a rude hand gesture. Katara and Toph laughed.

“Oh, you’re going to _get it_ for this,” Sokka said, and Zuko watched with wide eyes, but after Sokka fought off his shirt and pants, he only dunked Aang underwater for a second before letting him back up and starting a splash war.

Zuko found a large boulder and sat down on top of it, waiting for the wind and the heat of the sun to dry him as he watched the others. The sooner he was dry, the sooner he could be warm again.

Katara and Toph joined Aang and Sokka in the water, playing around and diving. Toph eventually sat down on a rock, and Sokka found an island to fish from. (Zuko was pretty sure that there weren’t any fish in this lake, but he didn’t need to tell Sokka that. They had supplies from the last town, so it wasn’t an emergency.)

“Hey, Zuko!” Aang shouted. Once Zuko was looking at him, he signed, “Come and join us! The water is good!”

“The water will make me cold,” Zuko corrected him. Hot spring or not, the wind would get him as soon as he got out.

Aang shook his head. “Good,” he repeated. “It’s much warmer in here than up there.”

“I don’t want to freeze to death,” Zuko said. “No, thank you. I’m okay up here.”

“Hey, Aang, swimming is fun and all,” Toph said, “but should you really be exposing yourself like that? Cover up.”

Aang looked a little insulted. “I’m wearing trunks,” he protested.

Toph rolled her eyes. “I mean your tattoos. What if someone sees?”

Katara gestured at the crater. “There’s walls all around us. We’re pretty safe. And you’d hear anyone coming, right?”

“Well…you are right about that,” Toph conceded. “I’m very good at hearing people coming.”

Zuko heard a whoop, and he turned just in time to see Aang disappear into a tunnel, yelling in excitement the entire time.

“If that tunnel dead ends, I’m not rescuing him,” Zuko informed the rest of them.

“Me neither,” agreed Toph.

“He’ll be fine,” Katara said, but she stayed close to the tunnel, listening for signs of trouble.

“Hey, Zuko, seriously,” Sokka said. “Try the water. It’s actually a lot warmer than it was when Aang threw it at us.”

“I was almost dry,” Zuko said, but the promise of warmth, however temporary, was tempting. He slid down from his boulder. “Fine, I’m coming.”

He shucked his pants and tunic and waded in, swimming out to the others. Sokka was right; the water was pleasantly warm.

The water was opaque enough that they probably couldn’t even see his scars. He relaxed, treading water near Sokka’s fishing boulder. If he stayed on one side of it, it acted as a windbreak, and the sun warmed him too.

Aang came back a few minutes later, dropping in from above. “Hey, the waterslide is great!” he yelled. “I’m going again!”

Sokka set his fishing pole down. “Hey, Toph, watch my line for a minute, will you?”

“Watch your own line!” Toph said, following him and Aang. She’d learned a bit about swimming since they’d arrived, but at the moment – Zuko squinted – she was actually earthbending herself through the lake.

Katara looked at Zuko. “There’s no fish in this lake,” she said.

“No,” he agreed.

“We might as well go with them. You know, just in case they run into trouble.”

“Sure,” Zuko said. She dove into the tunnel, and he followed a few seconds later.

The floor of the tunnel was smooth, and the curves rushed toward him as he slid down, throwing him from side to side. He laughed as the others’ shrieks echoed back to him, only to yelp as the tunnel took a steep drop before spitting him out into a waterfall.

He flailed as he fell, landing with a splash in the pool below. He came up sputtering, grinning so hard that his face hurt.

“Come on,” Katara called from the shore. “We should go again!”

So they climbed up the cliff and slid down again. And then another time. By the time they were all too tired to go again, the sun was nearly setting. Zuko waded back onto the shore of the hot spring, feeling the water pull at him, and grabbed his blanket, using it as a towel. His shirt and pants had dried completely since their earlier soaking, and he grabbed a clean pair of trunks from his bag.

The others followed suit as the shadows grew longer, until the sun was out of sight. Despite his dry clothes, Zuko started shivering, and he did a firebreath to warm himself up.

“What’s for dinner?” Toph asked.

“I was planning on soup, but there’s no fire,” Katara said.

“We can make soup,” Zuko said. “Toph, can I have a couple rocks from above the waterline? No moisture at all.”

“Sure,” Toph said. She punched at him, and he caught the two rocks, hands stinging from the impact. He set them down by his feet.

Katara said, “The pot’s ready for the heat.”

Zuko took a deep breath and punched down at the rocks, heating them until they were glowing brighter than the flames around them.

“Toph?” he said. She stomped, throwing the rocks into the air – Zuko flinched, jerking away from them – and they fell into the pot with a plunk.

“I wasn’t gonna hit you, sparky,” Toph said. “A little trust would be nice.”

Zuko stared at her and scoffed, turning back to the others. “The soup should be hot in a few minutes.”

“Hey, Toph,” Sokka said. “Do you remember that conversation we all had a few weeks ago, the one about how Zuko got his scar?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Toph said. “Oh. Um. Sorry, sparky. My bad.”

“Don’t worry about it. Katara, how’s the soup?”

“Getting there,” Katara said, stirring it. “The noodles need a while longer.”

They sat in silence as the soup cooked.

“You know what I miss?” Sokka said as they ate. “Gran-Gran’s sea prune stew.”

“Yeah,” Katara agreed. “I miss her hugs, too. And her lectures, even though I hated them.”

“She’s _so good_ at yelling at us,” Sokka said fondly. “You know, Dad told me that I was in charge of the village when he left, but I really think Gran-Gran was.”

“Gran-Gran was definitely in charge,” Katara said. “Everybody knew it but you.”

“I miss being warm,” Toph said. “And kicking The Boulder’s ass. And not doing dishes.”

“I miss Gyatso,” Aang said. “He taught me how to bake the most amazing cakes to throw at the other monks. I never had parents, but he was sort of like my father, I guess. And Kuzon. I wish I could see him again. Maybe he’s out there, somewhere. He’d be as old as Bumi by now.”

In the fading light, they looked at Zuko. “What about you?” Aang asked.

“I miss Uncle.”

“Yeah, no, we know that,” Sokka said. “But what about your home?”

“I lived on a ship for three years, Sokka. I don’t have a home,” Zuko said, signing as well as speaking. He sighed. “I miss my mother. I miss the palace library and the turtleduck ponds and Mai.”

“Mai? The knife-throwing girl who keeps trying to kill us?” Katara asked.

“She’s – well, we used to be friends. But Azula kept trying to interfere, and then I was exiled. I haven’t seen her since,” Zuko said.

“Oh,” Aang said. “Well, maybe you’ll get to see her again after the eclipse! I bet she’ll be really happy to see you. I know I’d be really happy to see Kuzon.”

“Maybe,” Zuko said, although he knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Katara stood up and stretched. “Well, I’m going to get some sleep. We should try to leave pretty early tomorrow.”

She went over to her bedroll, grabbed her blanket, and frowned. “The blankets are still wet. We won’t be able to use them until tomorrow night. Unless you can dry them, Zuko?”

“It would take a while, and we’d be lucky if none of them burned,” Zuko said. The blankets were heavy, which was nice at night, but they took _forever_ to dry out when they got damp.

“Hey, wait,” Aang said. “Firebenders are warm.”

“Yeah, good for Zuko, but the rest of us are cold,” Sokka said.

“I’m not warm,” Zuko said. “I’m cold.”

“But you can _be_ warm, right?” Aang said, advancing on him. “That’s why Momo likes sleeping on you.”

“Yes,” Zuko said reluctantly, backing away.

Toph joined Aang in the creeping-toward-Zuko gang. He backed away faster, until he ran into a very furry wall.

Dammit. They had him cornered.

“Katara, bring the bedrolls over here,” Aang said, eyes not leaving Zuko. “We’ll make a pile against Appa.”

Katara and Sokka arranged all of the bedrolls. Aang glanced away for a second, and Zuko made his move.

Unfortunately, Appa was just tall enough that Zuko couldn’t jump to reach his back, and his fur was, in addition to being soft and warm, _slippery_ –

He landed on the bedrolls, and they were on him in an instant. He was promptly manhandled into an ideal heat-providing position.

He was half-sitting up against Appa’s side. Toph and Aang were each in possession of one of his arms. Katara and Sokka leaned against his legs, heads resting next to his stomach. Zuko was absolutely covered in other humans.

…it wasn’t horrible.

“Be warm now,” Sokka said, poking him in the side.

“Don’t poke me,” Zuko said, glaring at him. He did a firebreath into the sky, letting the heat radiate out from him. Momo landed on his chest a second later, curling up.

“This is much better than campfires,” Toph said sleepily. Zuko squirmed, trying to get more comfortable, and she swatted his shoulder. “Stop moving, sparky.”

He resigned himself to a long night.

But they were actually pretty warm, in a pile like this, and he dropped off to sleep as the others’ breathing slowed.

* * *

Something was wrong.

Zuko’s limbs were iron weights, dragging him into the earth (or was it the sea, finally drowning him like La had tried to, all those weeks ago?) but, strangely, that wasn’t the problem.

His right arm was free. His eyes snapped open.

“Toph?” he whispered, not daring to move. The sky must have clouded over; the moon and stars weren’t visible at all. He couldn’t see anything.

She tapped his hand twice. He tapped once in agreement and stayed silent as she listened to the earth.

He listened hard, staring up into the darkness, but there was nothing to hear or see.

Toph stood up silently, only the slightest shift in the air letting Zuko know she had moved. His eyes started to adjust properly; he could pick out her outline against the clouds.

“Get them up,” Toph whispered. “Something’s coming. A metal man.”

For a moment, Zuko wondered if he’d misheard, but she nodded at him. With one hand, he nudged Momo off of his chest and gently shook Aang’s shoulder.

Aang started to protest, but stopped when Zuko put a hand across his mouth.

Zuko removed his hand. “She hears a metal man coming. Stay quiet,” he said, as quietly as he could.

Aang carefully disentangled himself from Zuko’s arm and grabbed his staff.

Next was Katara, who woke up silently, and then Sokka, who didn’t want to wake up at all. Zuko finally convinced him that it was worth it by poking him until he opened his eyes out of sheer annoyance.

Together, they got to their feet. Sokka had his sword at the ready, Katara had water drawn from the hot springs spinning around her, and Zuko was ready to draw his dao.

The clouds cleared, and moonlight reflected off of something at the top of the crater, reflecting on Aang's face for a split second.

It was a metal hand.

“Move!” Zuko yelled, and the earth started to explode as the man fired. Aang stomped, creating a wall, but it crumbled and threw them all backwards.

Zuko landed hard, skinning his elbows in the gravel, and shoved himself to his feet. He pulled Toph up from where she’d fallen. She took a second to steady herself and threw a boulder at the man.

He exploded it. In midair. With his _head._

(There was something familiar there, but there wasn’t any time for him to think about it, because he was trying to _kill them all –)_

Katara threw a wave at him, but he dodged it easily and fired into the lake, creating an explosion of steam.

Cover. He could work with cover. “Get to Appa,” Zuko said to Toph. “Take Katara and Sokka. Forget the bedrolls.”

“Believe me, they’re long forgotten,” Toph said. She ran for Katara.

“Aang!” Zuko yelled.

“I see him, I see him!” Aang yelled back, shooting an air blast up at the assassin.

Zuko threw a palm-heel up, sending a wall of flame at the assassin, but he countered with his own flames.

“Oh, that’s just not fair,” Sokka complained loudly.

The assassin turned his gaze toward Zuko, and the marking on his forehead started to glow. Zuko prepared to throw up the most important block of his life (and the last, if he didn’t get it right) but Aang was faster.

He slammed into Zuko, sending them both flying up the crater wall. Below them, the ground exploded.

Zuko scrambled to find purchase as they slammed into the wall, hanging onto Aang with one arm. “Come on, let’s go!”

“But the others–”

“They’ll find us. We gave them enough cover to escape,” Zuko said, hauling himself over the rim. “Earthbend us down the cliff.”

“I can do better than that,” Aang said. “Jump!”

Zuko was insane. There was really no other explanation for it, because he was following the Avatar off of a cliff.

Ten terrifying seconds later, Aang made them an airbending cushion to land on, and they started running down the slope.

Zuko glanced back. Seeing nothing, he grabbed Aang’s arm and pulled him behind a tall rock.

He caught his breath quickly and checked their surroundings again. The rock was actually a short watchtower, hand-built in the style of Fire Nation camps.

There was someone lying on the other side of it. They had a broken ankle, or worse; Zuko was pretty sure toes weren’t supposed to point that direction.

Zuko motioned for Aang to stay put and scrambled over the rocks to the other side of the tower.

The soldier’s leg was definitely broken, and their torso was partly covered by rocks. Zuko dug them out, uncovering their head.

Well.

What was left of their head.

He took shallow, controlled breaths. _Nothing I can do for them._ He stood up, trying to figure out how he’d convince Aang not to go looking, and heard a pained wheeze.

The second soldier was lying a few meters away, half-pinned under a boulder. Zuko ran to them and took their helmet off.

“Thank you,” the soldier said softly, breath rattling.

“Easy,” Zuko said. “Save your strength.”

It was a meaningless directive, and both of them knew it. Both of the soldier’s legs were crushed under the boulder, and he knew the only reason she wasn’t dead yet was that the boulder had stopped the bleeding.

The soldier stared up at him, and Zuko suddenly realized that she couldn’t be more than a couple years older than him.

“Water,” she said. “Please.”

He propped her up as much as he could and helped her drink from his waterskin.

“Hey, you’re–” She swallowed hard, chest shaking with the force of holding in a cough. “You’re the prince. Prince Zuko.”

“I am,” Zuko said softly. “You did well today, soldier.”

“I sent a black-ribbon hawk. Never done that before,” she said, coughing and trying to wipe away the blood on her lips. “We couldn’t fight him.”

“I know,” he said. “We couldn’t either.”

“Rumor is you’re with the Avatar,” she said. “We’re supposed to kill you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Zuko said. She laughed, curling forward to ease the pain of what had to have been more than a few broken ribs.

“Prince Zuko–”

“Just Zuko,” Zuko said. “I’m not a prince anymore.”

She nodded. “Zuko, Duron – my partner, did he…?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

She grimaced. “Don’t be. I’ll join him soon enough.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Zuko said.

“I’ll talk however I want, sir,” she said. “I’m Rizu. Lieutenant.”

Zuko nodded.

Rizu took a few slow breaths, trying not to cough. “Is it true?”

“What?”

“You’re with the Avatar now.”

“Sort of. Not really,” Zuko said. “I don’t want to be part of this war anymore.”

“Hey, me neither,” Rizu said. “Bit late for that, though. For me, I mean.”

“My Uncle always says that it’s never too late to change,” Zuko said. “Especially when you’re trying to do the right thing.”

“Never too late, huh?” Rizu said. “Then I officially quit the army. Hand me my helmet.”

Zuko handed her the helmet, and she threw it. It landed with a clatter.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yeah. You’re traveling toward home, right?”

He nodded.

“Can – um, I’m sure you’re busy, but if you get the chance, can you give someone a message?”

“Tell them yourself,” Zuko said.

“We both know that’s not gonna happen, kid,” Rizu said. “Agni, you _are_ young. I knew that, obviously, but you’re out here alone.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m worried about the world. The Fire Lord is an abusive tyrant–”

“That’s treason,” Zuko said, heart racing like he expected his father to jump out of nowhere and challenge Rizu to an Agni Kai. “You can’t say that.”

“I said it. I’m right. Can’t you feel how wrong everything is? I thought I could before, but now it’s like the world is screaming. Everything is–” She broke off in a coughing fit. Zuko watched helplessly as she struggled to breathe, blinking away hot tears. _I don’t even know her. I shouldn’t be crying._

Finally, she stopped. “This war is wrong,” she said. “It’s _evil._ Someone has to stop it. It has to be you.”

“Facing my father isn’t my destiny,” Zuko said. “That’s the Avatar’s burden.”

“Who rules, once he’s gone? It has to be you. You’ll rebuild, instead of destroy. I can see it in your face,” Rizu said. “You don’t want to conquer. That makes you–” She coughed again. “Makes you a leader. You’re still my prince.”

“Rizu, you have to stop talking,” Zuko said. “Please.”

“Everyone tells me that,” she said. “I’m not going to start listening now. My message, it’s for Ming. She’s a guard at the prison. Tell her I’ll be waiting in the next life for her hand.”

“Her…hand?”

“Yeah.”

“In marriage?” Zuko asked.

“Or just to hold,” Rizu said, closing her eyes. She sounded tired, so tired.

“She won’t out you, right?” Zuko asked.

“I’ll be dead. How much trouble can I get in? Hey, who knew. The prince is on our side,” she said, words starting to slur together.

“I’m on your side. I’m part of your side,” Zuko added impulsively.

Rizu smiled. “Yeah? I’m glad. You can repeal Sozin’s laws.”

“I will,” Zuko said. “First chance I get after I take the throne. Promise.”

It was a lie. He was going to break Uncle out of prison and never return to the Capitol City. But the smile was still on her face when she slipped away.

He bowed in dogeza. _I’m sorry, Rizu._

“Zuko?” Aang asked from behind him, sounding small and scared.

Zuko turned. Aang was standing, staring past him at Rizu.

“Aang, they were soldiers. They knew what they signed up for,” Zuko said, and that was the _wrong thing to say_ _,_ apparently, because Aang started crying.

“How could you say that?” Aang said. “Nobody signs up to die in a pointless war, or to fight someone who blows stuff up with their mind!”

“Aang, you’re not…you’re not part of the military. I was. This happens, it happens all the time, and we’ve both _made_ it happen before,” Zuko snapped. “I wish it didn’t, but it does. This is what the other side looks like. This is what war is.”

He regretted saying it as soon as it was out of his mouth, but it was all true.

Aang stood there, trembling in the predawn chill. Zuko opened his arms, and Aang collapsed into them, breathing too fast.

“You’re the Avatar, but you’re a kid, too,” Zuko said. “You shouldn’t have to worry about this. I’m sorry that you have to.”

“Everything about the world is wrong. I was gone for too long,” Aang said once he’d gotten control of his breathing. “I need to fix it.”

“She said that, too. About the world,” Zuko said. “She said the war was wrong.”

The sky was turning from gray to blue. Zuko stood, wincing as his knee ached from spending so long sitting in an awkward position. “Come on. They’re gone, but we can give them a pyre.”

Aang nodded. “Okay.”

They gathered enough wood to build two pyres side by side. After Aang earthbent the boulder away, Zuko carried Riza to one and Duran to the other. He knelt before them as dawn broke. _Agni, guide them safely._

He lit the pyres and watched them burn.

Appa and the others appeared a few minutes later. Aang and Zuko climbed into the saddle, and they took off.

“That was _super weird,_ ” Toph said as they flew away. “What are the chances?”

“I don’t know, Toph,” Katara said. “I think he knew who we were.”

“He did,” Zuko said.

Everyone turned and looked at him. “How do you know?” Sokka asked.

“I’ve heard of him. Or, I’ve heard of an assassin who can cause explosions with his mind and has two metal limbs. Hopefully he’s the only one,” Zuko said.

“So Sparky Sparky Boom Man was an assassin,” Sokka mused.

“That’s a horrible nickname,” Toph said.

“Combustion Man?” Sokka tried.

“Better.”

“His family name is Farrow,” Zuko offered. “I don’t think he uses any other names.”

Sokka looked back and forth between Zuko and the others. “Okay. Um, team meeting. Zuko, go sit in the corner.”

“The saddle is round,” Zuko said.

“Corner!” Sokka said firmly, pointing to the back of the saddle.

Zuko rolled his eyes and sat where he was told, facing away from the others.

Unfortunately, Sokka seemed to have figured out that Zuko could overhear conversations (and that he was pretty good at it when he needed to be) so whatever discussion was happening was a silent one. Zuko was torn between annoyance that they were using signing against him and pride that he’d managed to teach them enough that they were passably fluent.

When he was allowed to turn back around, it was because they wanted to interrogate him.

“Zuko, how do you know so much about Farrow?” Sokka asked.

“I heard rumors growing up. Farrow and his ancestors have been used as weapons for political assassinations a few times,” Zuko said. “I don’t appreciate your implication. I gave you my word I wouldn’t try to harm Aang, and I didn’t break it.”

“You said _you_ wouldn’t try to harm Aang, not that you wouldn’t hire an assassin to do it for you,” Sokka said, which was splitting hairs, in Zuko’s professional opinion.

Aang said, “Sokka, I really don’t think he–”

“Aang, I know what you think, but we have to consider the facts here. Zuko knew who Farrow was, he could hire him through his contacts in the Fire Nation, and he needs you to get his honor back,” Sokka said. “Besides, who else could know you’re alive?”

“First of all, I was supposed to bring Aang back alive to regain my honor,” Zuko said. “I’ve given up on that. I want to get Uncle back and leave, _forever._ Farrow isn’t well-known outside of a few noble families, and of those people, I can only think of one person who would be able to figure out Aang’s alive.”

“You think Azula knows?” Katara asked.

“I don’t know how she could, but she would have taken credit for killing him. If she thought there was even a _chance_ that he was alive, she would do something about it. Otherwise…well, the Fire Lord won’t be happy when he finds out.”

That was an understatement. Zuko tried not to think about what might have happened, in the years he’d been gone. Azula had always been better than him at working around their father’s rage. But now, with him gone and the Avatar undead….

“I feel bad for her,” Aang said. “But she needs to stop trying to kill me. Can we stop Farrow? Does he have a secret weakness or anything?”

“I don’t know how we could,” Zuko said. “Running might be the best thing we can do.”

“So we run,” Sokka said. “Zuko, you’re off the hook for now.””

Zuko fought back the urge to say something bitter. It _stung_ _,_ that Sokka hadn’t trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t have hired an assassin.

 _He’s never had a reason to trust you,_ Zuko reminded himself. _This is what you should have expected when you joined them._

It still felt wrong.

They spent the next week hiking from town to town, not wanting to risk being seen in the skies. The weather was starting to clear up, making it difficult for their fog cover to blend in.

The others continued their newly-found habit of using Zuko as a personal campfire, despite having an actual campfire almost every night. By the fourth night, he gave up on the pretense and just started laying out his blanket on the pile that was currently serving as the group bedroll.

Sometimes he woke up panicking, still half-convinced the nightmares were real. It usually didn’t last long, but he started putting off sleep. He could stare up at the stars for at least a couple hours before dropping off, even if he couldn’t move.

One night, as he was calculating the angle between two constellations by using trees as reference points, Aang started to twitch.

He seemed to be having a conversation in his sleep, which probably wasn’t out of the ordinary. He didn’t seem upset, at least. In fact, he looked happy.

“Okay, Roku,” Aang muttered, rolling over.

Was Aang talking to Avatar Roku in his sleep? Had it been a real conversation, or just a dream?

Zuko had _so many questions_ and he couldn’t ask any of them because if he woke Toph up, she would murder him.

The next morning, over tea, Aang announced, “We need to get to Roku’s home by the summer solstice.”

“Not according to the schedule,” Sokka said. “The schedule says we need to keep heading west if we want to make it to the Capital City in time for the eclipse.” He waved his teacup menacingly.

“This is important,” Aang said. “I talked to Roku last night, and he said that I needed to learn the truth about how the war began.”

“Aang, the summer solstice is tomorrow,” Katara said. “How far away is Roku’s home?”

Sokka took out his map and spread it out. “Well, we’re here,” he said, pointing.

“This was Roku’s home. It’s a small island off the coast,” Zuko said, tapping it. “If we leave at dusk and fly the entire way, we can make it by dawn tomorrow.”

Aang nodded. “Sokka, this is _really important._ I think if I’m going to stop the war, I need to know everything about it.”

Sokka sighed. “Okay. We’ll make it work. But we’ll have to skip the entire next island. Flying around it should make up for the lost time.”

They spent the day futzing around the camp. Katara and Zuko experimented with fish fried rice, which was declared a success by Sokka and a failure by everyone else who tried it.

They packed up the camp in the late afternoon, piling their blankets and belongings into Appa’s saddle. As the sun set, they took off and flew north.

Zuko sat wrapped in a blanket, wind whipping his hair into his eyes. He blinked, irritated, and pulled it up into a topknot.

They reached the sea as the moon started to rise. Appa flew low and fast over the waves.

By the time the moon set, the island was in view. They landed and climbed out.

“There’s nothing here,” Katara said. “Where did Roku live?”

Toph cocked her head, listening to whatever her feet were telling her. “There used to be a village. Hundreds of houses, but they’re all buried now.”

“I’ll meditate here,” Aang said. “I’m going to try to enter the spirit world so Roku can teach me what I need to know.”

He sat in agura on top of a boulder and closed his eyes.

Zuko thought back to his classes. They’d taught him about Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin, but he hadn’t paid enough attention to remember much about them.

Day broke, and Aang’s spirit drifted free of his body, vanishing almost immediately.

“Happy solstice,” Zuko said. “How long do you think he’ll be gone?”

“Time’s different in the spirit world,” Sokka said. “No way of knowing. We might as well settle in.”

“Oh. Did Aang tell you that? How did you figure it out?” Zuko asked.

“No, I went there once. It was a very strange place. No bathrooms,” Sokka said thoughtfully. “And the animals were different. Very spirit-y.”

“Most people who enter the spirit world don’t get to leave,” Zuko said. “Ever.”

Sokka shrugged. “It worked out, in the end. I prefer to keep my feet where they belong, though, which is right here in the science-and-physical-things world.”

Uncle was going to get a kick out of this. Sokka, not the Avatar or even a bender, had entered the spirit world, messed around for a while, and then just _left._

Katara and Sokka used their blankets to make a sort of shade against Appa. They sat under it with Toph, avoiding the worst of the morning sun.

Zuko walked around the island, enjoying the heat radiating from the black rocks. It had been over a hundred years since the volcano had last erupted, and plants were starting to return to the island. The waves on the eastern half of the island were starting to wear the lava rock down into coarse black sand.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, he had completed his loop, and he was starting to understand why they’d put up a shade. He joined them under it and settled in for a long afternoon of waiting.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Katara asked.

“My great-grandfather,” Zuko said. “Fire Lord Sozin. He started the war.”

“Why?” Sokka asked.

Zuko shrugged. “Because he thought he would win. Why does anyone start a war?”

They sat in silence until the sun began to set. Finally, Aang opened his eyes.

“Whoa, I gotta go,” he said, running for the nearest large boulder. When he came back, his eyes were wide. “Roku taught me _so much_ about our history.”

“Let’s hear it on the road,” Sokka said, throwing the shade blankets back into the saddle. “We’ll fly until moonrise and then stop to get some sleep.”

They climbed into Appa’s saddle. “Yip yip, buddy. Head west,” Aang said. “I’ll be up to help navigate in a while.”

Appa grunted his agreement and took off toward the setting sun.

“So, what did you learn?” Katara asked.

“For starters, Roku and Sozin used to be best friends _,_ ” Aang said, and okay, _that_ wasn’t what Zuko had been expecting. Had they mentioned that in his history classes? He didn’t think they had.

Aang told them the whole story, signing as much as he could translate. He glanced at Zuko as he revealed the ending – _how could my great-grandfather break an honor bond like that?_ – but spoke steadily.

“You mean, after all Roku and Sozin went through together, even after Roku showed him mercy, Sozin betrayed him like that?” Katara said, horrified.

“It’s like these people are _born_ bad,” Toph said. Zuko opened his mouth to argue, because those were _his people_ she was talking about, but Aang got there first.

“No, that’s wrong,” Aang said, shaking his head. “I don't think that was the point of what Roku showed me at all.”

“Then what was the point?” Sokka asked.

“Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right?” Aang said. “If anything, their story proves anyone's capable of great evil _and_ great good.” He gave Zuko a pointed look. “Everyone, even the Fire Nation - even _Ozai_ \- has to be treated like they're worth giving a chance, because nobody is born bad.”

 _Nobody is born bad._ Zuko considered that. It was hard to think about. _Could Father have done good things, if he was given the chance? Or would he have chosen the war regardless?_

“And I also think it was about friendships,” Aang added as an afterthought. “It’s kinda cool. I used to be best friends with the Fire Lord. That proves that we don’t _have_ to hate each other.”

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” Toph asked, tilting her head.

“I don’t see why not,” Katara said, catching Toph’s hand. Aang took her other hand.

“Well, scientifically speaking-” Sokka was cut off by Katara thwapping the back of his head.

“Oh, Sokka, just hold hands,” she said.

Aang grabbed Zuko’s right hand, and Sokka took his left.

“I don’t know if I can ever be friends with Ozai,” Aang said. “But I’m friends with the Earth King, the leaders of the Water Tribes, and the Fire Nation prince.”

Zuko repressed the urge to remind him that he wasn’t a prince, not anymore.

“Oh, and Roku said something else, too. He told me to say hello to his great-grandson for him,” Aang said. “I sorta got the impression that it was someone I knew.”

“Well, it’s not me,” Sokka said. “All of my great-grandfathers were Water Tribe, through and through.”

“Sokka, you don’t actually know our family tree,” Katara said.

“Not technically, but I’m right. I think.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Katara agreed. “And it wouldn’t make sense for him to say hello to you but not me.”

They looked at Zuko.

“It’s not me. _Azulon_ was my great-grandfather, not Roku,” Zuko said.

“What about the other side of your family?” Katara asked.

“I don’t know much about my mother’s family,” Zuko said. “But she’s _not_ a descendant of Roku.”

“Is she a firebender?” Sokka asked.

“She must be,” Zuko said. “Fire Lords, and future Fire Lords, aren’t supposed to marry nonbenders. That would endanger the line of succession.”

“You have to be a bender to be the Fire Lord? Okay, that does kinda make sense,” Aang said. “If she’s a firebender, then maybe one of her parents was Roku’s kid.”

“Wait, she _must_ be?” Sokka asked. “Zuko?”

Zuko glanced from Katara to Sokka. _She didn’t tell them?_

He said, “She disappeared when I was a kid. I don’t remember ever seeing her firebend.”

Sokka bit his lip. “I’m sorry. That’s rough.”

“It’s fine. Anyways, if she was Roku’s granddaughter, their marriage wouldn’t have been allowed,” Zuko said. “Azulon would have put an end to it.”

“Well, if you’re sure, then I guess it can’t be you,” Aang said.

The conversation turned to other possibilities, but Zuko’s mind wandered.

 _I never saw Mom firebend. How could that be?_ She’d never trained with them, or casually caused torches to flare like Father had. Zuko had always thought that it was because she was good at controlling her bending.

When they landed and set up camp, Zuko went for a walk in the forest. He wandered until he came to a meadow, and sat down in the moonlight.

He took Uncle’s letter from his tunic and broke the seal.

Half of the parchment was taken up by an official family tree, written in a court scribe’s best handwriting. Zuko skimmed half of it; he already knew plenty about his father’s side of the family.

Uncle had taken the liberty of fixing Zuko’s name, carefully blacking out the other one and replacing it in writing that was neater than his usual hand.

From there, Zuko looked up at Ursa’s branch. Her parents were Rina and Jinzuk. There was nothing above Jinzuk, but above Rina - 

Roku and Ta Min.

_Roku was my great-grandfather?_

Zuko felt sick. He stared at the family tree, not really seeing it.

_How can that be true?_

He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.

Below the family tree, Uncle had written a message.

_My friend,_

_The story of your great-grandfather’s demise reveals your own destiny. Evil and good are at war inside you (and have been for your entire life). It is your nature, the legacy of your great-grandfathers passed down to you._

_I had wished to tell you this in person, with history books and memoirs to offer proof. If you had chosen to return with your sister, I would have done so. Instead, I hope you still travel with Toph and her compatriots._

_The war that began a century ago can be ended now, by you. Because of your heritage, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world._

_I have made many mistakes in my life. You are not one of them._

There was no signature. Zuko reread the letter and came to the conclusion that Uncle must have deliberately written it so that if it was intercepted, it wouldn’t be traceable to him or to Zuko.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to yell at something and breath fire until the forest burned down.

He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he rolled up the scroll neatly, gently heated the wax enough to reseal it, and tucked it back into his tunic.

The waxing quarter moon was bright enough for him to easily find his way back to camp. Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph were fast asleep in a tangled pile of elbows and knees.

The fire had burned down to coals. He set the scroll on it and watched the flames flare up until nothing was left of it but ashes.

He took his pack out of Appa’s saddle and left camp, glancing over his shoulder as he went.

_I’m sorry. I have to do this alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was originally supposed to be a shot in “The Beach” showing the two Fire Nation guards dead, but it was cut. Combustion Man is _not_ on the army’s side.
> 
> Summary of the tw injury/death lines: Zuko found the two guards. One was dead and one was dying. He sat with Rizu, the dying guard. She recognized him as the prince and told him that the war was wrong, the world was out of balance, he had to fix it, and would he please tell her girlfriend Ming that she would be waiting on the other side. He promised to repeal Sozin’s laws as soon as he took the throne (which he considered a lie since he didn’t intend to ever become the Firelord) and Rizu died at peace.
> 
> The next chapter unexpectedly became one of my favorites. I'm excited to hear what you all think!


	6. The Runaway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko Alone 2: Electric Boogaloo
> 
> Tw for drowning. Skip from _Zuko swam faster_ to _His frantic coughing slowed as time passed._
> 
> Sometimes, as a writer, you sort of think that you’re in charge of the characters and their actions. Other times, they run away from their friends because they learn who their great-grandfather on their maternal grandmother’s side was, and you have to replot the next couple of chapters.
> 
> This chapter was originally merged with chapter 7, until it turned out to be a beast of over 14k words and I split it in half for its crimes.
> 
> Unbeta'd, will be edited later :-)

Zuko walked through the forest, stumbling through thickets and nearly tripping over tree roots, until he came to a road.

It was a small road, worn smooth with footprints. He turned right.

As the moon set, he followed the road up the mountain. He was starting to suspect that it didn't lead to a town, but he didn't want to retrace his steps, so he kept walking.

Just after dawn, he heard the crunch of a wagon coming up the road, far faster than he was moving. He stepped to the side, ready to fight or let it pass, whichever was necessary.

The wagon, which was an open-top transport being pulled by komodo rhinos, slowed to a stop.

“Need a ride, stranger?” asked the driver.

“Where are you headed?” Zuko asked.

“Up to the mine. Only place to go on this road. Hop in if you want,” he said.

“Thanks,” Zuko said. He climbed into the wagon and sat in the nearest open seat.

The miners, although their days were only starting, already had black coal dust on their clothes. They laughed and joked with each other as the wagon pulled into the mine.

“Ako’s the overman on shift,” one of them said to Zuko. “Report to him and he’ll assign you work.”

Zuko nodded.

It was easy to find Ako. He had an outdoor office set up between the shaft entrance and a pile of broken carts, and he was assigning a few men work.

Zuko got in the queue. He was the only one there by the time he reached the front; the other miners in the wagon must have been permanent workers.

“Looking for work?” Ako asked.

“Yes, sir. Just for the day,” Zuko said.

“Doesn’t pay much,” he warned.

“That’s fine. Does it come with food?”

“Yeah, we’ll get you lunch and dinner,” Ako said. “Name?”

“Lee Eto.”

Ako wrote it down in his ledger. “Have you mined before?”

“No. I learn fast, though. And I’m a firebender, so if you have any need for that, I can help,” Zuko said.

Ako frowned. “Well, I can’t let you into the mine. There’s too high a risk of gasses or the coal dust catching fire. Report to the lampman over there. He’ll find something for you to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zuko went across the yard to the lampman.

“Need a lamp?” he asked, glancing up from the headlamp he was repairing. “I can get you one ready in just a minute.”

“No, Ako told me to report to you. For work. I’m a firebender,” Zuko said. “My name’s Lee.”

“I’m Ju,” he said. “Come on back. I could use the help.”

Zuko came around to the other side of Ju’s table. He had two large baskets of headlamps, one mostly empty, and a large wooden grid set up.

“Take the used lamps and unscrew the bottom canister. Pour it into the molds, rinse them out at the spigot, and set them out on the table to dry,” Ju instructed.

Easy enough. Zuko grabbed a headlamp from the full basket and unscrewed the bottom part. It was full of a thick, muddy cement.

“How do they work?” he asked, kneeling over the molds and tapping the canister.

“There’s water in the top and a chemical in the bottom. The screw controls the flow of water. When they meet, they make a flame,” Ju said, adjusting one of the lamps with a screwdriver. “It leaves the cement behind, so we make bricks and sell them in town.”

 _They won’t let a firebender into the mine, but they carry open flames on their heads?_ “What chemical?” he asked, smoothing the cement into the gaps between the smooth, flat stones in the mold.

“A mixture of lime and refined coal. We’ll make some later,” Ju said, glancing over at him. “Most folks who end up here don’t want to learn.”

Zuko shrugged. “Just curious.”

He took a few canisters over to the spigot and washed them out, and continued to slowly work his way through the basket while Ju made minor repairs. Eventually, Ju joined him, and together they finished quickly.

“What next?” Zuko asked.

Ju glanced up at the sun. “Still a couple hours until midday. We have time to make a batch of carbide, and then we’ll start refilling.”

Zuko followed him a quarter mile into the woods, until they reached a furnace. Ju shoveled lime and refined coal into it. “I usually use coal under the furnace to help me keep the reaction going, but since there’s two of us we won’t need any,” he said. He removed two panels from the furnace. Zuko helped him set up two metal tunnels, propped up at an angle.

“Once we start, we’ll go for about fifteen minutes,” Ju said. “Think you can handle it?”

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

Zuko took a long stance at his tunnel, and at Ju’s signal he started striking fire into the furnace.

It was hot work, and he had to be careful not to touch the edges of the tunnel, which were starting to glow with heat. Fifteen minutes of continuous bending wouldn’t usually be hard for him, but he was so exhausted that by the time Ju stopped, he was ready to collapse.

“Good job,” Ju said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, we just have to get the next set of lamps ready and then it’s lunch break for us.”

Refilling the lamps was fiddly work, but it wasn’t too hard. Ju showed Zuko how to measure out the right amount of carbide and funnel it into the lower canisters.

Once all of the headlamps were filled and ready to use, Ju and Zuko put them into the basket and sent them down on a cart so that the miners could switch out their lamps.

Ako came over to Ju’s table. “Done for the morning?” When Ju nodded, he set two tin bowls on the table. “Here’s lunch. Back to work in twenty minutes.”

They sat in the shade under a pine tree, eating their lunches in silence. Zuko drank from his waterskin and refilled it at the spigot.

Once they’d eaten, they washed their bowls and got back to work. By that time, the old lamps had come back up, and they needed to be emptied and dried.

Doing that took up a good portion of the afternoon. At Ju’s direction, Zuko went out to the furnace and retrieved the newly made carbide, which would need to be ground down into powder before they added it to the stock barrel.

As he was walking back with the wheelbarrow, the ground rumbled. Zuko stumbled, spilling some of the carbide, and heard shouts coming from ahead. His exhaustion fell away, replaced by adrenaline. He dropped the wheelbarrow and ran back to the main clearing.

Dust was billowing out from the mine shaft. The miners had evacuated, and were crowded around Ako’s table, talking over each other frantically.

Ju was standing off to the side. Zuko joined him. “What happened?” he asked.

“Outburst. Part of a coal seam collapsed and trapped one of the men at the bottom of the shaft,” Ju said. “They’re trying to figure out how to get him out.”

“How bad was it?”

“Bad. It released a lot of gas, but it hasn’t exploded,” Ju said grimly. “And there’s no access through the main tunnel, not until we can clear it.”

“That’ll take too long,” one of the miners said. “Tiro won’t make it. The afterdamp’s too strong to breathe in.”

“There’s no other way to get to him,” another argued. “The air shaft’s too small for any of us.”

“We could get one of the kids from town. Jao is strong enough.”

“Jao is _thirteen._ I’m not sending a child into my mine,” Ako said. “That’s what the damn military is for.”

Zuko made a mental note to figure out what that meant later. But for now–

“How big is the air shaft?”

“Two feet by one and a half. Tiro’s a small man, so he could fit in it if we got a rope down to him, but we think he was knocked out by the blast,” Ako said.

“You can send me down,” Zuko said.

The clamor stopped for a second as the miners turned to look at Zuko.

“What are you, fourteen? And a firebender to boot. No,” one of them said. “We’re not fools.”

“I’m sixteen, and I’m not afraid of fire,” Zuko said, making aggressive eye contact with Ako. Ako glanced at the left half of Zuko’s face, and then back to his workers. “If something catches, I’ll _put it out.”_

“Can he do that?” Ako asked Ju.

“He’s a decent bender,” Ju said. “And he’s the only one of us who could fit. We’re running out of time, Ako. What’s the plan?”

Ako nodded. “Fellas, get the kid a harness and set up a rig. We’re getting Tiro out.”

The miners stuffed Zuko into a full-body harness and tightened it as far as it would go, tying knots to adjust it to his size. It was uncomfortably snug, but he had room to breathe fully, which was all he needed.

They hurried up to the air shaft and set up a winch.

“You can’t take a headlamp,” Ju said. “It’ll be the darkest place you’ve ever been in your life, darker than a stormy night at sea. Cold, too.”

Zuko nodded.

“Tug once for more slack, twice for less, three times to be brought up,” the miner who was tying him in said. “Good luck, kid.”

He knelt and crawled into the shaft, trusting his weight to the harness as the slope steepened.

Within a few yards, there was almost no light left. Once he took the first corner, it vanished completely.

There was no difference between open eyes and shut eyes, so he left his shut and felt his way forward as they lowered him into the mine.

When the air shaft curved again, Zuko wound up lying on his back. There wasn’t enough room for him to roll over, but by shoving one arm forward and one down against his body, he managed to get onto his stomach. He dragged himself forward.

After what felt like miles, he reached the edge of the air shaft. After waving his arms around and feeling nothing, he let himself drop out into space, clutching his rope with one hand to fight against the disorientation of floating in a void.

They lowered him until his feet hit the ground. The scree was loose, but it was fine enough that he didn’t have much trouble getting his footing.

The most uncomfortable thing about the mine shaft was not the darkness. It wasn’t the cold, or the smell, or the dust that Zuko could feel settling into his skin. The most uncomfortable thing about the mine shaft was that it wasn’t silent. Rocks were settling here and there, the flow of air whistled, and the stone wall itself was creaking, a reminder that it was not as stationary Zuko would have liked to think.

“Tiro?” he called, his voice echoing strangely.

There was no reply. Keeping one hand on the right wall, Zuko picked his way forward, using his left hand to sweep across the ground. The temptation to summon a flame – just a tiny flare, _anything_ was better than this – was nearly overwhelming.

Afraid that he would accidentally start a fire, Zuko stopped and meditated, controlling his breathing carefully.

And then he held his breath and listened as intently as he could in the near-silence.

There were the creaks and groans of the mine shaft, the clatter of shifting pebbles, and something else. Something _breathing._

Zuko tugged once for slack and lunged toward the noise, scrambling through the shaft. His hand brushed against something soft, and then warm skin.

_He’s alive!_

“Tiro,” Zuko said, pulling him to a sitting position. “Tiro, can you hear me?”

Tiro groaned.

“I’m going to get you out,” Zuko said. He tugged twice, and the slack tightened. Tiro was larger than Zuko, but not by much. He could lift him enough to drag him backwards a couple steps at a time, sitting into his harness to use the rope as leverage.

Finally, he made it back to the shaft. He sat down, wrapped his legs under Tiro’s arms, and tugged three times.

It took all of the strength that he had to get them both into the shaft in one piece. As he struggled to keep hold of Tiro, a single spark slipped from his finger.

He watched it dance, the world slowing down until nothing else moved..

The spark multiplied, catching motes of dust and tendrils of invisible gas in the air, so bright that it was throwing shadows all around him.

Zuko inhaled, catching the rapidly expanding flames, and tried to damp them, holding out a hand to stop them from moving. They grew farther and farther away as he was pulled up the shaft, but he could feel them trying to escape, to burn, to _grow_.

Someone grabbed his arm, and pulled him and Tiro out of the shaft.

“Down!” Zuko yelled, tugging Tiro away from the entrance and doing his best to cover both of their heads.

The spark caught with a _boom_ _._ Zuko felt the heat of flames at his back as they exploded up from the air shaft, and tried to relax. _It'll hurt more if I'm tense._

The flames retreated a second later. Zuko held very still, but the ground seemed to be holding stable. He blinked, adjusting to the bright sunlight, and looked around.

Everyone was okay. Most of the miners had dove for cover and were now helping each other up, and Ju was grinning at Zuko.

“Hey, not bad,” he said. “Tiro, buddy, let’s get you back home.”

Ju and Ako picked up Tiro and carried him down the slope. The other miners helped Zuko out of his harness.

“I thought you’d blow the place up for sure,” one of them said. “But you held it back until you were out. Nice job, kid.”

“Thanks,” Zuko said, still shaken.

“You look like a real miner,” another one of them said, chuckling. “Better take a bath, once you get where you’re going.”

Zuko glanced down at his tunic, which was indeed covered in coal dust. _Ugh._

They all wandered back down to the clearing. Tiro and Ju had been sent off in the wagon for the healers in the nearest town, and Ako told the rest of them to go home early. Zuko watched them walk down the path.

“A couple of the men told me that they picked you up on the road. Said you didn’t know there was a mine here,” Ako said, startling Zuko. He turned to see the overman watching him. “Anyways, you’re just a traveler. You didn’t have to help Tiro. Nobody would have blamed you for not wanting to go down.”

“I would have,” Zuko said.

Ako gave him a curious look. “You’re an odd one. Come on. I sent the salaried workers home, but I promised you dinner.”

Dinner, as it turned out, was more of the same rice they’d had for lunch. It was delicious, although Zuko could have done without the lingering ashiness of coal dust in his mouth.

“Earlier, you mentioned something about the military enlisting children. Do they really do that?” Zuko asked casually.

“Of course they do. They don’t care who mines the coal, as long as they have a steady supply,” Ako said. “This is one of the only mines around here that only employs adults.”

He paused, and looked at Zuko cautiously. “I should be watching my mouth. How do I know you aren’t going to report me in the next town over?”

Zuko considered that. “How do I know you’re not going to report me?”

“What, did you skip out on the draft? You’re a runaway? We have plenty of those here,” Ako said. “Nah, I wouldn’t turn you in for that.”

“Worse than that,” Zuko said. “I’ve got a bounty on my head. Fire Lord’s orders.”

“What’d you do?” Ako said. “I’m not fond of that man, but then again, you might deserve it.”

Zuko looked at Ako and continued to eat his rice, waiting patiently.

Ako frowned, confused, and looked at him intently. It took him, by Zuko’s count, three minutes to reach a conclusion.

“You lied to me, earlier,” he said. “Your name isn’t Lee, is it?”

“No,” Zuko said. “And that’s how you know I’m not going to report you.”

“Well, this’ll be one for the grandkids,” Ako muttered. “I can offer you a place to stay for the night, if you need.”

He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. I want to get across the mountains as soon as I can.”

“You look like you haven’t slept in two days,” Ako said, which was technically true. “Come to my home, clean up and get a few hours’ rest, and move on when you need to.”

Rest was unnecessary, a distraction. Clean, however, sounded _nice._

“Thank you,” Zuko said. “I appreciate it.”

A few hours later, the night shift workers arrived. Ako handed off his station to the new overman, explaining the situation. Then he and Zuko started on the walk back to Ako’s home.

“They’ll clean out the main shaft overnight,” Ako said. “Then we’ll be able to see how bad the damage was, and what can be recovered.”

It turned out Ako and his family lived in a small house in the woods, closer to the mine than the other workers.

“Lina?” Ako called as he opened the front door. “Hey, kids!”

A small swarm of children (Zuko counted four) and a squirrel-toad that one of them was waving around surrounded Ako, all yelling excitedly.

“Daddy, look at my squirrel-toad!”

“Daaaad, she’s touching me, make her _stooop!”_

_“Look what Sei caught!”_

Zuko stayed back where he was, letting Ako deal with his chaotic offspring.

“Sei, that is a _wonderful_ squirrel-toad. Please put it back where you found it,” Ako said. “Iru, could you show my friend where our wash tub is? He’s had a long day.”

One of the kids sulked off with the squirrel-toad, and another ran over to Zuko.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Iru. What’s your name?”

“I’m Lee,” he said.

“You’re really dirty, Lee. Come on,” Iru said, grabbing his hand and leading him behind the house. There was a wash tub set up behind a woven privacy screen. “Here’s the pump, and the soap. Daddy says it’s best not to get clothes wet when they have coal dust. Just smack ‘em around a bit.”

She vanished, allowing Zuko privacy. He took off his tunic and shook it until most of the dust was out. Then he filled the tub, washed his face and upper body until the water was black, and refilled it with fresh water.

It took several iterations of the process for him to get mostly clean. He combed his hair with his fingers, put his clothes back on, and walked around to the front of the house as the stars were starting to come out.

Ako and his wife were gathered around a fire in their yard, sitting on felled logs. Zuko joined them, watching the kids chase sparkbugs.

“I’m Lina. It’s nice to meet you,” his wife said.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Zuko said. “I appreciate it.”

“Of course. We’re always glad to help travelers, especially in times like these,” she said. “Should I call you Lee?”

He nodded. “It’s best that nobody knows who I am.”

“I understand. We’ve set up a bed for you in our front room. It’s not much,” she said. “But I’m guessing you’ve been sleeping outdoors lately.”

“When I’ve had time to sleep at all,” Zuko said, nodding.

“Sei, stop!” Ako said. Zuko turned to see the squirrel-toad-kidnapping child running full tilt at the fire pit, chasing a sparkbug. She glanced over at her father but didn’t stop moving, stumbled over a rock, and flew face-first at the burning pile of wood.

Zuko lunged forward and snagged the back of her tunic, pulling her back to safety. She stared up at him with wide eyes and burst into tears.

“Um,” Zuko said, looking at Ako.

Ako scooped Sei up and soothed her until she stopped crying. The other three kids came over to the fire pit, more subdued than before.

“Thank you for that,” Lina said. “It’s a disaster a day around here, with this lot. Every time I turn around, they’ve found something new and dangerous to mess around with.”

“Kids are good at that,” Zuko said, thinking about Aang and ocean spirits, volcanoes, icebergs, and Fire Nation schools.

Sei slipped down from her father’s arms and sat on Zuko’s left. She started talking.

“Could you sit over here?” Zuko asked, indicating his right side. “It helps me hear you.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said, switching to her new seat. “Is your ear broken ‘cause of your scar?”

“Kind of,” Zuko said.

“How’d you get it? It’s _really_ big. I have a few scars, but they’re small. And mostly on my arms and legs. I got this one from a frog-viper,” she added, showing Zuko a set of two round scars on her forearm.

Zuko didn’t know a whole lot about children, but he was _pretty sure_ that the truth was the wrong answer here.

“I was chasing a sparkbug and fell into a fire pit,” he said, deadpan. Sei’s three siblings giggled.

Sei stared at him, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “No.”

“Oh, yes,” Zuko said. “My parents tried to warn me, but I didn’t stop to listen.”

“You’re kidding around,” she decided. “That’s not _really_ how you got it.”

“Okay, you caught me,” Zuko said. “I was kidding. But you should be more careful around the fire pit.”

“Watch my feet before watching sparkbugs. I know,” she said. “But how, though?”

Zuko glanced at Ako and Lina, who each met his gaze steadily.

“When I was little, I used to live in Capital City,” Zuko said. “Do you know where that is?”

Sei nodded. “That’s where the palace is. The Firelord lives there.”

“Yes, he does. One day, I said that I didn’t think it was right to send a group of young soldiers into a trap,” Zuko said.

“Daddy says the army is doing bad things, but we can’t blame the soldiers who got – what’s it called – scripted.”

“Conscripted,” Ako said.

“Conscripted,” Sei repeated.

“Yes. It wasn’t the soldiers’ fault, and I didn’t think it was fair to let them get hurt. But I made the people in charge so angry that they challenged me to an Agni Kai,” Zuko said.

“A what?” Iru asked.

“An Agni Kai,” Zuko said. “It’s a duel between two firebenders. They usually happen when someone’s honor is questioned.”

“And they thought you were dishonorable to them?” Sei said.

“They thought I was questioning their honor,” Zuko said. “They were right about that, so I accepted the challenge. But I wasn’t fighting who I thought I was.”

“Who were you fighting?” Iru asked.

“The Firelord,” Zuko said. All four kids gasped in horror. “I couldn’t fight against him. He gave me my scar and I had to leave Capital City forever.”

“What about your family?” Sei said, wide-eyed.

“My uncle chose to come with me. Everyone else stayed.”

“That’s so sad,” Sei said, grabbing her sister’s hand.

“I’d fight the Firelord,” Iru said. “I’d walk right up to him and kick him where the sun don’t shine.” She demonstrated her kick with a warrior’s yell.

“Nice power,” Zuko said, trying very hard not to dwell on the image of Iru kicking his father in the groin.

“And with that, I think it’s bedtime for you all,” Ako said, standing up and stretching. The kids protested halfheartedly, but they followed him into the house anyway, yawning.

“We’ve got you in here,” Lina said. “There’s a bedroll and some blankets. Ako said you might leave early. There’s bread on the counter if you want.”

“Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Lee,” she said. “Good luck with your mission.”

And then he was alone, standing in a stranger’s house. He tugged the bedroll against the wall and lied down, letting himself rest for the first time in two days.

He went out like a spark and didn’t dream.

The early morning light filtering in through the window woke him. It wasn’t yet dawn, but he had still slept longer than he’d intended.

Zuko tore off a quarter of the loaf of bread, stuck it in his pack, and left while they were all still sleeping.

He made it back out to the road and hiked toward the crest of the ridge, beyond the coal mine. He reached it by the time the sun was a hand’s width above the treeline.

He looked out over the western half of the island, choosing his next target. Regardless of his issues regarding his apparent ancestry, he still needed to break Uncle out of prison during the eclipse, so he had to make it off the island.

There was a port city not too far from him. It would take the day to get there, if not part of the night as well, but he could do it without stopping for rest and find a way to the next island from there.

His legs and back ached as he made his way down the mountain, a reminder of how he’d spent the previous day. He did his best to stretch his muscles out as he walked, but the burning sensation remained.

It was just pain, though, so he mostly ignored it. He ate his bread and considered picking the unfamiliar berries that were growing here and there before remembering the white jade incident and deciding it wasn’t worth the risk.

He was off of the mountain by late afternoon, and he found a road that seemed to read toward the port city.

Now that he was out of the woods and on a fairly flat path, he could let his mind wander as he walked. He wondered how Aang and the others were faring alone. _Hopefully they’re okay._

Zuko felt guilty about abandoning them without so much as a note, but…he couldn’t face them. Not knowing that he _was_ Roku’s great-grandson in addition to Sozin’s.

Who was he supposed to be now? It had been clear what Sozin’s great-grandson was supposed to be. He’d failed to meet those expectations, but at least he understood them.

What would Roku want him to be? Even considering the question felt so wrong that Zuko wanted to tear his hair out. If Roku was anything like Aang, he’d want Zuko to stop the war and unite the people of the world with the power of friendship and vegetarianism or something.

The Avatar’s reincarnations weren’t all alike, though. From what he’d read, Kyoshi was nothing like Aang, so maybe Roku hadn’t been either. Aang had told them that even after Sozin had revealed his intentions, he and Roku had lived in peace for years, until Sozin had found an opportunity to get rid of him. Sozin must have really been afraid of him if he’d waited until he was dead to start the war. _I guess Roku would have killed him, if he’d had to. If he had, would Azulon have started a war in his place?_

Then it would have been Roku’s job to stop Azulon. To stop Zuko’s entire family, if he had to.

The war was wrong. Zuko knew that, and some part of him had known it for years. It was his family’s legacy, passed down from Firelord to Firelord. That was one of the reasons he wanted to leave. He didn’t want it, not for himself or the world.

But if Roku was Zuko’s great-grandfather, maybe that wasn’t the only legacy his ancestors had passed on to him. Roku had kept the peace for his entire life, watching Sozin like a raven-hawk, dedicating himself to stopping the war at any cost, even his death.

With a start, Zuko realized he’d been deluding himself. How could he and Uncle start a life of their own with the war still happening? It had reached Ba Sing Se, and if the Firelord had his way, nowhere would be safe.

Aang might be able to stop him. But he wasn’t even a firebender, and he was younger than Zuko had been at the time of the Agni Kai. And the eclipse would only be a few minutes long, and there was no way that Aang would kill him before it was over. Hakoda or Toph would, and probably Sokka and Katara too, but not Aang.

And Aang was convinced that he had to fight Ozai alone.

_Could I put an end to one of my family’s legacies by upholding another?_

As Zuko was considering that, he became aware that he wasn’t alone on the road. It was nearly sunset, and he hadn’t seen many other travelers during the day. Strange, considering the size of the port city, but maybe there weren’t many other places to travel to and from on the island.

There was a group of at least three walking behind him. He slowed his pace slightly, but they didn’t come alongside him.

_Bandits._

Zuko turned, drawing his dao to face them with a snarl. “Don’t even think about it.”

“What, you’re going to fight us all?” one of them asked, grinning. “You’re a feisty one. Might even be pretty, without that scar.”

Five on one weren’t the best of odds, but he could definitely work with them. Zuko lunged forward, already planning his next steps, and slashed at the leader’s head.

He parried, as expected, and Zuko ducked under a dagger that would have slit his throat. He forced a pathway through the bandits and took it, staying quick on his feet to keep them from surrounding him.

Disarm one, throw their knife deep into the brush. Parry, slice, slide left, duck again and hammerfist down–

Broken collarbone. That one wouldn’t be fighting for a few weeks. One down, one disarmed, and Zuko hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He did a low sweeping kick, throwing fire at the bandits, and followed up with dao and kicks.

Thirty seconds later, the leader was backing away from him, hands raised in surrender.

“Stop robbing people,” Zuko said. He turned and walked away.

It was moonset by the time he reached the docks of the port city. He checked the posted schedules and found out that there was a daily ferry that went to the next island and back, which left an hour past dawn.

After inquiring at the booth, Zuko learned that tickets cost three gold pieces each, which was when he remembered that he didn’t have any money.

He wandered around the docks. There were a few guards here and there, but other than that, the only thing between him and the ferry was a tall fence.

He scaled it and dropped down on the other side, rolling to soften his landing. He froze where he’d stopped, waiting and listening.

When no guards came to investigate, Zuko snuck through the maze of shipping crates until he had a good vantage point for the ferry. It was docked in the most convenient spot to access from the marketplace entrance to the docks. There was a second guard station by the docking ramp, which wasn’t yet extended.

Zuko frowned. _This isn’t going to be as easy as I thought._

He waited until sunrise, when passengers started to line up outside of the gates. The ferry extended its ramp, and they filed to the next guard station, showing their tickets.

The guards seemed to be paying attention, which was unfortunate. He waited, hoping that they would stop to help an elderly or disabled passenger board the ferry, but he’d never been that lucky and he wasn’t about to start now.

“Last call!” the portmaster shouted. “Last call for the sunrise ferry!”

 _Now or never._ Zuko tugged his hood up and bolted, blowing past both guards – they tried to grab him, and one of them got a hand on his hood only to yell as his momentum tore him away from their fingers – and rushing onto the ferry. Shouts echoed behind him, but he quickly vanished into the crowd, putting his hood back up. He ended up leaning on the wall next to a mother and a wailing child, which was _horrible_ _,_ but in theory, everyone else would also avoid it.

A few minutes later, the ferry cast off, chugging along with all the speed of a snail-sloth. Zuko relaxed and made his way back up to the deck.

The sun had appeared above the horizon, and the harbor behind them was brightly lit. Zuko looked back into the city, wishing he’d had a bit more time to look around it, or (his stomach grumbled) get breakfast at the marketplace.

Right. No money. Well, maybe he could have run odd jobs for a few hours, or found a Pai Sho den and tried Uncle’s White Lotus thing until he found someone who understood it.

It was all behind him now. As the harbor grew smaller in the distance, something caught Zuko’s eye. A small dot, flashing in the sunlight and flying at high speed. _A messenger hawk?_

The hawk followed the ferry, passing high overhead in a flurry of flapping. Zuko squinted up at it and caught a glimpse of a black ribbon.

_Oh, shit._

There were _very_ few circumstances in which a soldier would send a black-ribbon messenger hawk, which meant that Zuko had been recognized. _Was it Ako? No, it can’t be. It must have been the guards at the gate. They saw me with my hood down long enough to recognize my scar from the posters. Damn it!_

Zuko weighed his options. They were fast approaching the next port, and there would certainly be soldiers waiting for him.

He could try to swim, but it was a long way to shore, and the waves didn’t look especially friendly. Tidal currents between islands could be dangerous to fishing boats, never mind a firebender without a raft.

…That was it. That was his only escape option, other than surrender and pray to Agni that whoever was in charge was enough of a fool to accept.

That wasn’t a chance he could take. Swimming it was. He could wait until they got close enough to the harbor for him to stand a chance at making it. He’d swam plenty, as a kid. He wasn’t helpless in the water, and he could keep himself warm easily enough. The main issue would be getting to shore fast.

He sat down and stretched, ignoring the dirty looks the other passengers gave him for taking up more than his fair share of space. He watched the bow of the ship and the new harbor growing closer.

 _Thirty more seconds, an_ _d then go,_ he told himself, watching the horizon.

The rumble and screech of army boat engines, raspier than the steady thrum of a navy ship, echoed in his right ear. His gaze shot to the harbor.

They’d launched a small fleet of one-man boats and larger speedboats, and they were coming for the ferry. Coming for _him._

He dropped his pack and his dao and dove over the side of the ferry, entering the water with a splash and swimming as deep as he could in its wake. For a moment, the world was still and silent, the water pleasantly cool on his face, and he almost understood the appeal of being a waterbender.

In the saltwater, he couldn’t open his eyes, so he picked the direction he thought was toward the shore and started swimming.

He didn’t make it very far before he needed air. He surfaced, took a couple quick breaths, and reoriented himself. The army boats had reached the ferry, and he could see a few soldiers on the deck, sorting through the crowds.

He had a few minutes, then. He took a deep breath and dove back down, swimming as far as he could.

The next time he came up, they weren’t on the ferry any more. Instead, they were swarming in a search pattern, spreading out from the boat.

Zuko swam faster, not bothering to dive as deep. If they caught up to him, it wouldn’t matter how easily visible he’d be. He’d have to come up for breath eventually.

The world narrowed to just him and the next wave, his arms and legs aching as he swam. He was getting closer to the shore, certainly, but it still seemed to be an impossible distance away, as untouchable as Agni or Tui.

His limbs were starting to sag. _No!_ He forced himself to keep up his pace, struggling to stay afloat as choppy, wind-driven waves battered him.

Something struck him in the back. He twisted, gasping, and tried to claw it away, but it wrapped himself around him, pinning one of his arms to his side and rendering his legs uselessly bound.

A speedboat circled him, watching as the lead-weighted net they’d thrown pulled Zuko down. He tried to take a breath but choked on seawater as a wave washed over him. _I need air!_

He flailed as hard as he could, but he couldn't reach the surface, even with his fingertips. _No, please, not like this, not like this,_ he pleaded. _Agni, I don’t want to drown!_

But this was La’s domain, not Agni’s, and the light of the sun was growing farther away. He struggled, trying to firebreath the net away but only warming the water slightly before his breath ran out. He clamped his free hand over his nose and mouth, stopping himself from inhaling seawater.

There was no air. But he _had_ to breathe, he couldn’t _not_ breathe, he was a firebender – 

His vision was starting to grey out, stars flaring in his periphery. He kicked weakly, using his hand to try to pull himself upward through the water. He gagged as his lungs betrayed him and inhaled, trying to cough out the water, but he couldn’t stop now, he had to keep swimming – 

Something pulled him upward. At first he thought it was a trick, his oxygen-deprived brain giving him one last hopeful fantasy, but then he broke the surface and someone yanked him aboard a boat.

He convulsed, spewing out seawater and coughing so hard he thought his ribs might be cracking. Fire Nation army soldiers were swarming around him, cutting the net and restraining him with iron handcuffs, but he was too weak to resist. (He did give it a try, for about half a second, but then he had to cough again and he gave up.)

Everything was too bright, too loud. He shut his eyes, chest still heaving as he coughed, not caring where he was being carried.

His frantic coughing slowed as time passed. A rough hand grabbed his chin. His eyes snapped open, and he stared at an army captain.

“Do not mistake this for weakness,” the captain said, speaking slowly and clearly. “If you try to escape my custody, I’ll tie you to canon ammunition and watch you drown.”

Zuko nodded his understanding, and he was released.

They’d cuffed his hands and feet, but not gagged him. Zuko wasn’t sure how well-known it was that Uncle had taught him to firebreath, which might have given him the element of surprise. But he really didn’t want to get stuck with seawater in his lungs, so he didn’t push his luck.

Instead, even when his breathing settled, he kept coughing to clear his lungs. Once he could take a deep breath and hold it for a second without coughing, he accepted his progress as the best he was going to get for a while and took inventory of his situation.

Body, freezing cold and soaking wet, potentially experiencing shock. Lungs, mostly functional unless he had to run, swim, or fight. Ribs, bruised. Arms and legs, fully functional but scratched-up and cuffed. Throat, sore from coughing but not bleeding. Eyes, overwhelmed and stinging but functional. Ear, functional. No dao, no pack.

His cuffs were loosely attached to a railing. He could move some, but not more than about a foot in any direction. He was in some sort of prisoner transport, on land, thank Agni.

He shivered, leaning back against the wall. It was cool to the touch – they weren’t traveling in the sun. _A forest, then, or a canyon._

To pass the time, he did breathing exercises, summoning tiny flames to his fingers. He lied on his side for a while, occasionally coughing up bits of salty phlegm. He was dehydrated, certainly, but not dangerously so.

Sharing a pot of hot tea with Uncle sounded like the best thing in the world. Zuko didn’t even _like_ tea that much.

The transport jerked to a stop, throwing Zuko sideways against his chains. His head slid against a sharp edge, opening a cut on his forehead. He grimaced and pulled himself back upright as the doors were opened, blinking blood out of his eyes.

He was escorted to an all-metal brig. His hands were cuffed on short chains bolted to the wall. His feet were given the same treatment. He could move a few inches, but not enough to sit down.

“Lieutenant, get the colonel,” the captain said, standing in the corner of the room. _“_ _Immediately.”_

The lieutenant bowed and departed at a run, leaving him alone with the captain.

“Why?” Zuko asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Why not let me drown? The wanted posters were pretty clear that you weren’t supposed to capture me,” Zuko said, pausing for breath every few words.

The door slammed open before he could reply. The captain immediately came to attention, saluting neatly and bowing when he was given the at ease.

The colonel was an imposing man, easily as tall as Zuko’s father. Flanked by two lieutenants, he stared at Zuko, and then at the captain.

“You brought me here for a half-drowned rat?” he said furiously. “Explain yourself.”

Zuko realized that his hair, still wet, had flopped down and covered his scar. Unable to reach with his hands, he shook it back from his forehead. “A half-drowned exile, actually,” he said, baring his teeth in an approximation of a grin as the colonel’s eyes widened.

“You captured the former prince?”

The captain straightened, clearly proud of himself. “Yes, sir.” _That’s why he brought me up,_ Zuko realized. _He wants a promotion._

“Are you _illiterate_ _,_ man?”

The captain stammered. Zuko watched in amusement as he struggled to put together a sentence. “Sir, I – I thought–”

“You didn’t _think_ at all. Our orders were clear,” the colonel said. “Come with me. Lieutenants, guard the prisoner.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said meekly, following him out the door a regulation half-step behind, leaving Zuko alone with his two new guards.

“Hello,” he said, waving with his cuffed left hand. “Is there any chance that you could get me some water? I inhaled a lot of the ocean earlier.”

One of the guards made a face in sympathy, but the other was stoic. “Traitors don’t get water.”

“What, do you think I’m going to waterbend it?”

“Uh…no. You just don’t get water,” the guard said.

“We can take him out to the fountain. That way, if he tries anything, he’ll be surrounded by everyone,” the other guard suggested.

“It’s not regulation.”

“Neither was taking him prisoner in the first place,” the kinder guard pointed out.

“Point. Okay, let’s go before the colonel gets done with poor Cap.”

They switched Zuko to transport handcuffs and took him out into the courtyard, keeping him off-balance with occasional shoves.

He didn’t care. When they reached the fountain, he dunked his head in and drank, cleaning the salt from his eyes and throat.

They gave him thirty seconds and pulled him upright. He glanced over the encampment, which was set up exactly to the army standard.

The captain and colonel were walking through the mess. Zuko could see the colonel’s face clearly; he was able to get a few seconds of lip-reading in.

“Prepare for gone into cute,” the colonel said, and then Zuko was pushed away.

 _Gone into cute_ was clearly incorrect. The only phrase Zuko could think of that would read remotely similar to that was _dawn execution_ , which made a lot more sense.

The sun was setting as they recuffed him to the wall in his cell. 

Zuko usually meditated in seiza or agura, but he couldn’t sit. So he stood, closed his eyes, and breathed carefully in a flameless meditation.

_Twelve hours until my execution. I won’t be able to escape then, they’ll be too careful. I can’t convince them to release me._

That meant he’d have to escape from his cell. There was no way he would get another water break, or any other sort of break for that matter, before dawn. So he’d have to get out of his handcuffs himself.

Two guards meant he couldn’t depend on getting the cuff key from either one. They’d left it outside of the room, anyway.

If he could bend, he could heat up the links of the cuffs until they were breakable, but he didn’t have enough control of his breath to use firebreathing for it. That meant he’d need one free hand to bend, and enough of a distraction that he would have time to get out of the cell and find a way out of the camp.

Firebreathing at the guards would be enough of a distraction that both of them would leave the room, one to get backup and one to get a gag. That would buy him at least two minutes, but he would still need to free one of his hands.

Once he came up with that solution, all that was left to do was wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the tw: drowning lines, Zuko tried to swim back to shore but got caught by the army in a heavy net. He was pulled back up at the last minute.
> 
> I have many ap chem stories, several of which strongly relate to the fact that letting a gang of junior/senior ap students into a lab with no supervision is objectively a bad idea, but the one that is relevant here is that one time we got to play with a carbide mining lamp and it was fun.
> 
> Sparkbugs (fireflies) in ATLA ‘verse can blink in any color they want to, which creates a rainbow of sparkbugs on any given night.
> 
> If Lina and Ako seemed underwhelmed by Zuko saving Sei, it’s because they have four children and have adapted to constant chaos.
> 
> “You don’t want to ~~sell me deathsticks~~ rob people. You want to go home and rethink your life.” –Zuko @ bandits, 100 AG, colorized.
> 
> As usual, I love your comments and I’m @agenderzuko on tumblr if you want to yell at me there too! I'm starting a wildly busy semester, so I may not reply quickly, but I see and appreciate you all.


	7. The Puppetmaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy halfway point!
> 
> Again, unbeta'd.
> 
>  **Tw** for self-induced injury for the purpose of escaping a very bad situation. Skip from _Zuko took the deepest breath he could_ to _He ran out of the cell_

Firebending was harder at night, but Tui’s light was still Agni’s. Zuko could feel it deep in his bones when the moon rose above the trees, like a faint echo of the sun’s power. That would give him enough to do what he had to do.

“Do you know why General Iroh is called the Dragon of the West?” Zuko asked conversationally.

Two pairs of eyes looked at him, wary and curious in equal measure. “I don’t,” one of the guards said.

“He killed the last of the dragons,” the other said.

“Killing a dragon doesn’t make you a dragon,” the first one said, looking at his partner askance.

“Well, no, but–”

Zuko took the deepest breath he could and _roared_ , throwing a wide stream of fire at the guards. They yelled and bolted.

Without time to wait, he tucked his left hand into an awkward position, twisted to plant his feet against the wall, and _yanked._

He cried out as bone splintered, his vision going blank with pain, but his left hand was free. He pulled it to his chest, allowing one, two, three breaths of weakness, and shouted as he used it to heat the chains connecting his right handcuff to the wall.

It _burned_ , not just the scorching heat of his fire, but also the scrape of the broken bones in his hand and the skin that had torn at the base of his thumb.

Zuko gritted his teeth and tugged hard, and then his right hand was off the wall. He yelped as the red-hot chain bounced off his forearm and shook it off, hissing in pain.

Time was running out. His feet needed to be free.

He took his pain, his anger, and channeled it into a single blast, directed at the wall. The wall exploded, and he stumbled backwards, feet dragging chains but technically free.

_Go. Go now!_

He ran out of the cell, skidding through the doorway. They had left his bag and his dao just outside, below the hanging set of keys. He stuck the keys into his bag, slung it around his right shoulder, picked up the dao in his right hand, and ran away from the brig, skirting the edge of the fountain courtyard as soldiers started to yell to each other.

He made it into the catapult yard, weaving in between them with the ease of practice. He’d done this before, and if he remembered correctly, the guards stationed in this area were required to respond to disturbances in the camp.

They came within inches of spotting him when they ran by, but he held perfectly still and they passed.

He threw his dao over the fence, pulled his pack around his left shoulder so that it sat evenly, and scaled the wall, using his left elbow and his right hand to drag him up.

He fell over the other side, landing heavily on his right ankle as he tried to protect his left hand. _Fuck!_

It wasn’t broken, but it was sprained badly. He picked up his dao and stumbled into the woods, heading north as fast as he could. The noise from the camp had grown into a roar, officers and soldiers shouting at each other and tearing apart every niche looking for him.

After a mile, he stopped to fish the keys out of his pack to unlock his three remaining cuffs. Once he properly belted his dao, he had a free hand, so he picked up a stick and used it as a crutch.

His ankle, his head, and his hand throbbed with every step, but he couldn’t stop. The soldiers would have realized he’d escaped by now, and they’d be sending parties into the woods. Would they bother to drown him like the captain had promised, or just take him where he stood? At that point, he’d prefer the latter.

He kept walking, for hours and hours.

When dawn broke, he tucked himself under a bush and rested for a couple of hours, unable to continue.

By noon, he was able to push himself to his feet. His hand hurt worse – it felt really swollen, now, and he didn’t want to look at it – and so did his ankle, but at least his head was better.

He walked all through the day and into the night. He had to be nearly there by now; the eastern port wasn’t that far from the north side of the island.

The waxing gibbous moon stared down at him, lighting the path enough that he could see roots before they tripped him.

As his vision was starting to swim with exhaustion, he sensed more than saw the campfire ahead. He shoved through the thorny brush, bloodying his good hand and groaning as he stumbled onto his sprained ankle.

Finally, _finally_ , he burst into the clearing.

It was them. Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph were all standing around a campfire and staring at him, looking…terrified.

He waved at them, leaning on his stick. “Hello. Zuko here,” he said, and collapsed.

\---

Zuko was cold.

He did not appreciate that fact, and he curled up tighter.

Something warm and Zuko-sized sat down beside him. He grabbed at the heat source and pulled it closer to him, despite its protests, and eventually it gave in.

Good.

He was a little bit warmer, now.

\---

He woke up feeling like he’d been trampled by a very angry herd of komodo rhinos and their friends, the equally angry family of sabertooth moose-lions.

Opening his eyes hurt, but they adjusted quickly enough. He was lying in a bed, the covers pulled up around him. The room was small, impersonal, with neutral decor. It was early morning, judging by the light coming in from the window.

Momo was sitting on the bedpost, watching him with wide eyes and twitching ears. “Hey, buddy,” Zuko said, and Momo flew to him, chittering angrily even as he rolled over on Zuko’s lap. He went to scratch the lemur’s ears, only to find that his hand was in a cast.

He remembered, now. He’d almost drowned, gotten captured, almost gotten executed, and broken his hand escaping. That did explain all of the pain.

He used his right hand to scritch Momo’s ears, ignoring the lemur’s scolding, and swung his legs to the side of the bed, sitting up slowly.

His ankle felt a lot better. He could put weight on it without too much pain, so he hobbled to the door.

It opened into a hallway with several other doors. There were a lot of options, so Zuko skipped all of them, heading for the open room at the end, where he could hear conversation.

And he was pretty sure he smelled food.

He started recognizing their voices as he drew closer. He turned the corner into a dining room.

“Lee!” Aang yelled, dropping his spoon into his porridge.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Sokka said. “We didn’t think you’d be up for hours.”

“How’s your hand feeling?” Katara asked.

“It’s been better,” Zuko said.

“You must be Lee,” the old woman at the head of the table said. “Your friends told me all about you. So brave, escaping those bandits like you did. Please, sit. You must be starving.”

Zuko _was_ starving, but something seemed off about this situation. It wasn’t just that they were calling him Lee – that was smart of them, actually – but what _was_ this place?

He sat down left of Toph. “What happened?” he asked as the old woman passed a bowl of porridge down to him.

“You stumbled back into camp and collapsed. Then Hama appeared. She runs this inn, and she let us stay ‘cause the woods are dangerous at night, especially near the full moon,” Toph said in an undertone.

Zuko shoveled porridge into his mouth. It was the best porridge he had ever had, and possibly the best meal he had ever eaten, period.

“Any, uh, bandits?” he asked. “Since I got back.”

“Not a one,” Sokka said. “They’re all afraid of these woods.”

“Why did you leave?” Aang asked, looking at Zuko accusingly.

“Um, Hama, can I help you clean up?” Sokka said. “I’m great at dishes.”

“I can tell you all need some time to talk,” Hama said. She was a mumbler; Zuko was barely able to understand her. She said something else, waving Sokka off, and went back into the kitchen.

“Why’d you leave us?” Aang asked aloud and in sign, grey eyes staring at Zuko demandingly. “There were no bandits near us, so you must have gone somewhere before they got you.”

“You were right,” Zuko said, responding in kind. “About my great-grandfathers. I needed time alone to think. And I was captured by the Fire Nation army, not bandits.”

“Wait, you’re–?” Sokka started, looking back and forth. He pointed at Aang. “His great-grandson?”

Aang made a face.

“Roku’s,” Zuko corrected aloud. “Not his.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re doing better,” Katara said. “You were pretty out of it last night.”

Toph snickered.

“What did I do?” Zuko asked, not really sure that he wanted to know.

“You cuddled sugar queen. Hama thinks you’re her boyfriend,” Toph said smugly.

Heat rushed to Zuko’s cheeks. _Agni, kill me now._ “I’m so sorry, Katara. I wouldn’t – I mean, I did – but if I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay. No big deal,” Katara said, shrugging. “I think you were really cold.”

Zuko nodded. “I did almost drown two days ago. I think. Three days?” He frowned. “Yeah, three days.”

“Zuko, how many times did you almost die after you left?” Aang asked.

“Uh…I was in a mining accident. And then bandits attacked me. I got on the ferry and almost drowned when the army caught me, and the army tried to execute me. So, four,” Zuko said, ticking them off on his right hand. “But really only three. I had the bandits under control.”

“Zuko, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” Sokka said, grabbing Zuko’s shoulders. “You are _never. Allowed. To. Leave. Again._ You die _way_ too easily.”

“Okay,” said Zuko, although he didn’t intend on following that rule, since he hadn’t even died _once_ , unlike one particular airbender he could mention. “What’s up with Hama?”

“She’s really nice!” Katara said, apparently unaware of Sokka’s highly skeptical expression. “She reminds me of Gran-Gran. We’re all going shopping later. Want to come?”

Zuko shook his head. “I’ll stay here. If there’s soldiers in town, they’ll recognize me.” _After what I pulled, I’m surprised there aren’t soldiers ransacking every town on the island._

“Okay. I’ll try to heal you more later,” Katara promised. “But Hama found us before I could do much to help.”

They helped clear up the table (Zuko mostly watched the others help) and Katara hovered, watching Zuko walk back to his room before Hama took them to go shopping in town.

The inn was quiet, with the other human inhabitants gone. “Where’d they put Appa?” he asked Momo. “I mean, she can’t know about Appa. It’s much too easy to put together that he’s the Avatar when you see him next to a sky bison.”

Momo flicked his ears dismissively.

“Okay, you’re right. Sokka would have thought of that,” Zuko said. “I’m going to sleep now.”

Momo curled up in Zuko’s arms and purred. There was definitely something that felt wrong about the place, but Momo would wake him if there was immediate danger.

So Zuko napped for a few hours, until a banging noise woke him. Momo chittered irritably as he left the bed and crept into the hallway.

In the hallway, he saw an open cabinet door. Sokka was standing behind it, his sword drawn, his eyes wide and terrified.

Zuko started running toward him. Or, he _tried_ to start running toward him. He put too much pressure on his ankle with his first step and fell hard, landing on his right elbow.

“Ahhh!” Aang yelled, startled. Sokka yelped.

“It’s just Zuko,” Toph said.

“And they’re just dolls, stop freaking out,” Katara added. “She has a hobby, so what?”

“They’re creepy,” Sokka whined, but he closed the cabinet door and walked over to help Zuko up.

“You drew your sword for _dolls?_ ” Zuko asked, irritated. “I thought you were in trouble!”

“Sokka, you’ve snooped enough,” Katara said. “Hama will be back soon.”

“She’s an ordinary, puppet-loving innkeeper, huh? So why does she have a locked door up there?” Sokka said, gesturing toward the staircase.

“Probably to keep people like you from snooping through her stuff!”

“Sokka’s right. There’s something off about her,” Zuko said.

“I don’t know how you can say that, Zuko. You barely even spoke with her, and she took us in when she knew we couldn’t pay her. You were hurt, and she helped you!” Katara said.

“Something’s _not right_ about this place,” Zuko insisted. “Let’s leave tonight.”

“It’s the full moon,” Toph said. “While we were in town, we found out that people have gone missing every full moon for months. I don’t want to be one of them. Besides, I _need_ to know what’s behind the locked door.”

“Then it’s settled. We’ll investigate,” Sokka declared, hurrying up the stairs. Zuko followed slowly, with the others behind him.

Sokka peered through the keyhole of the locked door. “It’s empty except for a little chest.”

“Treasure,” Toph said with a grin. “Sweet!”

Sokka picked the lock quickly, which was a skill that was missing from Zuko’s repertoire. He should ask how to do it later. It could be useful if he ever wound up in handcuffs again.

“What are you _doing?_ You can’t just break into someone’s private room,” Katara said.

“I have to see what’s in there, Katara,” Sokka said. “It could be important.”

“Or valuable,” Toph said.

“Or dangerous,” Zuko added.

“Or none of our business,” Katara shot back. Sokka opened the door, and the five of them slid into the small room.

“We shouldn't be doing this,” Aang said, fidgeting uncomfortably.

“Give it to me,” Toph said, as Sokka failed to pry the chest open. “I’ve got just the thing.”

She took her meteorite ore bracelet and bent it into the shape of a key, sticking it into the chest and wiggling it around until it clicked.

“Got it!”

“This is crazy. I’m leaving,” Katara said, turning with a huff.

The door creaked open.

Everyone except Toph yelped in shock as Hama stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway’s light. For a second she seemed almost…angry. But she stepped forward, looking gently amused.

“I’ll show you what’s in the chest,” she said. Toph handed it to her.

She opened it, and they all peered inside.

“An old comb?” Sokka said. The comb was off-white and blue, finely carved from bone. It was a nice comb, but not worth enough to be locked up in its own room.

“It's my greatest treasure,” Hama said, picking it up carefully and turning it over in her hands. “It's the last thing I own from growing up in the Southern Water Tribe.”

_She’s Water Tribe?_

“You’re from the Southern Water Tribe?” Katara asked, voice softening.

“Just like you, dear,” Hama said.

“How’d you know we’re Water Tribe?” Sokka asked, frowning.

“I heard you telling that horror story around your campfire,” Hama said. “And of course your names. Katara and Sokka aren’t very common names around here.”

“Why didn’t you say something before?” Katara said.

Hama smiled widely. “ I wanted to surprise you! I bought all this food today so I could fix you a big Water Tribe dinner. Of course, I can't get all the ingredients I need here, but ocean kumquats are a lot like sea prunes if you stew them long enough.”

Aang and Toph made faces. Zuko had never tried sea prunes, but he was betting that they weren’t very spicy.

“I knew I felt a bond with you right away,” Katara breathed, and she looked _so happy_ that Zuko felt bad about his suspicious reaction to Hama.

“And I knew you were keeping a secret, so I guess we're both right,” Sokka said. Katara smacked his arm. “But I'm sorry we were sneaking around.”

“Apology accepted,” Hama said. “Now let’s get cooking!”

They all headed down for the kitchen. “Hey, Aang,” Zuko said, hanging back.

“What’s up, Zu – uh, Lee?”

“Hama mumbles a lot. Could you, um,” Zuko said, feeling guilty about asking.

“Oh, sure! It’ll be great practice,” Aang said, shaking out his hands. “I practiced every day while you were gone.”

“Thanks,” Zuko mumbled. “Sorry I didn’t leave a note, or anything.”

Aang sighed. “It’s okay. I get it. I used to run away, too.”

“You still run away,” Toph said. “I’m hungry, let’s move.”

So they went into the kitchen and were put to work making a Water Tribe feast. Zuko was put in charge of stirring the stew, since he could accomplish it with one hand, sitting on a stool.

He watched the others in amusement as they chopped, sautéed, baked, and laughed. The kitchen was just large enough for all of them to work, as long as they didn’t mind bumping into each other occasionally.

Aang snuck a head of cabbage into his tunic and ducked out. “Bathroom!” he said. “Back in a bit.”

To Zuko, he signed, “I’m going to feed Appa.”

Zuko nodded and gave him a thumbs-up as he left.

A few hours later, they gathered in the dining room to eat the finished meal.

“Who wants five-flavor soup?” Hama asked, setting the pot on the table. They all raised their hands, even Aang, who had been eyeing it suspiciously for most of the afternoon.

She raised her hands, and six spheres of soup rose from the pot and dropped into each of their bowls.

Sokka’s jaw dropped. “You’re a waterbender!”

“I've never met another waterbender from our tribe!” Katara said.

“That's because the Fire Nation wiped them all out,” Hama said. “I was the last one in the village.”

Aang translated for Zuko, who frowned. _Something is still wrong about this. I thought it was just that she was hiding her heritage, but that’s not it, is it?_

“How’d you end up out here?” Aang asked.

“I was stolen from my home by the Fire Nation. It was over sixty years ago, when the raids began,” Hama said. “I was just a girl, not much older than you are now. They came again and again, each time rounding up more of our waterbenders and taking them captive.”

Toph glanced at Zuko, who looked down. _We stole their entire bending culture from them._

“We did our best to hold them off, but our numbers dwindled as the raids continued. Finally, I too was captured,” Hama said, a distant look in her eyes. “I was led away in chains. The last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe.”

She sighed. “They put us in terrible prisons here in the Fire Nation. I was the only one who managed to escape.”

“How’d you escape?” Sokka asked. “And why didn’t you come home, afterward?”

“I’m sorry. It’s too painful to talk about any more,” Hama said, turning away. Zuko glanced at Toph. If she was listening to Hama with her lie-detector abilities, she wasn’t sharing the results.

“We completely understand. We lost our mother in one of the raids,” Katara said, hugging Hama.

“Oh, you poor things,” Hama said, patting Katara’s hand.

Katara blinked, her eyes shining. “I can't tell you what it means to meet you. It's an honor. You're a hero.”

“I never thought I'd meet another Southern waterbender,” Hama said. “I'd like to teach you what I know so you can carry on the Southern tradition when I'm gone.”

“Yes! Yes, of course! To learn about my heritage, it would mean everything to me,” Katara said, bowing. “I never had a teacher growing up. I found one at the North Pole, but the Northern Water Tribe doesn’t allow girls to train in anything but healing.”

“Hmph. They always were strict about that,” Hama grumbled. “Well, we’ll have none of that here. We can start tomorrow, if you’d like.”

Katara nodded happily.

After dinner, they worked together on the dishes. Zuko went to his room early, not wanting to stay around Hama longer than he had to.

His people had been responsible for the destruction of her culture. But it wasn’t just that making him uncomfortable, right? _There has to be something else._

He’d been around enough devastation to understand what the Fire Nation was doing to itself and to the other civilizations of the world. Something about the way Hama looked at him made him uneasy beyond that knowledge.

He waited for the rest of the inn to settle down before lighting a candle. As he was meditating, sitting in agura on the far side of the bed so that he wasn’t immediately visible to anyone who entered the room, the hallway creaked, and his door opened.

“Zuko?” Katara whispered.

“Over here,” Zuko said. Katara slipped in and shut the door behind her. “What are you doing?”

“I thought I’d get in a healing session, since Hama’s asleep,” Katara said. “What’s worse, your hand or your ankle?”

“Hand,” Zuko said, turning around. She sat down in front of him, uncapping her waterskin.

“What happened to it?” she asked, bringing out the water and sending it under the wrappings. Zuko hissed in discomfort as it stung.

“I broke it to get out of handcuffs,” he said. “And then I bent with it, fell off of a wall, and ran through the forest.”

Katara swore vehemently, startling him. “You did this to yourself?”

“I didn’t want to, but they were going to execute me. I’d rather be in pain than dead.”

“I know. I understand why you did it, but I don’t think I would be able to,” Katara said softly, pulling the water back. “Try to make a grabbing motion.”

“Sore, but not bad,” Zuko reported, stretching out his fingers.

“We’ll have to leave the wrappings on so that it can heal fully,” Katara said. “But I think it’ll get back to normal quickly. Foot.”

Zuko held his leg out. “It’s not great at bearing my weight.”

“Yeah. I saw you fall earlier,” Katara said, starting to heal it. Zuko grabbed his candle and scooted it to where he could see it, focusing on its light and heat.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the glow of Katara’s healing.

“Katara, for what’s it’s worth…I’m not on my father’s side in this war. I think I’m meant to end his legacy. Maybe that means siding with Aang, and maybe it doesn’t. But if any of you get captured, I’ll make sure you don’t have to do what I did,” Zuko said, avoiding her eyes.

She smiled at him, drawing the water out of his ankle. “Thanks, Zuko. And if any of us have anything to say about it, you won’t be getting captured again.”

He nodded.

Katara grabbed his right hand, pulling it toward her. “I thought I noticed a mark there,” she said, examining the place where he’d accidentally burned himself with his broken chains. “I can heal that, if you want.”

Zuko hesitated. “No. It’ll heal on its own.” _Let it scar._ It was a mark of his strength.

The door opened loudly. Zuko and Katara froze as the flickering candlelight suddenly seemed to throw larger shadows across the room. Zuko exhaled, concentrating, and it went out.

A dark figure appeared around the corner of the bed frame, looking down on them.

“Now, dears,” Hama said sternly, holding up her lamp, “I’ll have no sneaking around in my inn, _especially_ not young ladies sneaking into their boyfriends’ rooms after dark.”

Heat rushed to Zuko’s cheeks. Katara looked equally mortified; she dropped his hand and he snatched it back to his side.

Hama shuffled away. “Back to your room, please, Katara. Training starts after breakfast.”

She left the door open as she left. Katara stood up, ready to follow.

“Katara,” Zuko said. She paused. “I don’t think Hama is what she seems to be. Please be careful.”

She left, not acknowledging what he’d said.

Zuko didn’t sleep that night. He was too unsettled, and the nearly-full moon shining brightly in his window didn’t help. Momo clung to his arm as he got up at dawn, protesting his decision to leave the bed, but Zuko gently set him aside to greet Agni in meditation.

After the previous night’s healing, his ankle was a lot better. It barely even twinged as he went downstairs to eat breakfast with the others.

“Hey,” Zuko said, sitting next to Sokka. “Where’s your sister?”

“Off with Hama. Something about the morning mist being important to train,” Sokka said, waving his fork. His eyes narrowed. “She also said something about catching you and Katara in your bedroom last night.”

The fork-waving suddenly looked threatening. Aang was also glaring at Zuko, and he really did _not_ want to be in the middle of their relationship drama.

“She was healing my hand and ankle,” Zuko said, as carefully as if he were attempting to defuse a lit barrel of blasting jelly. “Hama made assumptions.”

Sokka frowned.

“I am not interested in dating your sister,” Zuko said.

“Why not? She’s really pretty,” Aang said.

“Yeah, are you saying Katara’s not pretty?” Toph added.

“Are you saying that my sister’s ugly?” Sokka said loudly, pointing the fork at Zuko’s face.

“No,” Zuko said defensively, kicking Toph under the table. She kicked him back, smiling sweetly as she bruised his shin. _I don’t like women, dumbass!_ “She’s pretty, sure, I just don’t want to date her. She’s the same age as _my_ sister.”

“Excellent point,” Sokka said. “Okay. I believe you. Scrambled eggs?”

After breakfast, Zuko joined Sokka, Toph, and Aang on a walk around the outskirts of the town. They looked high and low for anything that might have made the local spirits angry, but the town seemed to be doing everything right. Fields were set back a few yards away from streams, all of which had clean flowing water. The trees were growing tall, the grasses were flowering, and the wildlife seemed normal.

“I don’t see anything that would make a spirit mad around here,” Aang said as they looked out over the valley.

“Well, maybe the moon spirit just turned mean,” Toph said with a shrug.

Sokka whipped around from where he’d been smelling a patch of flowers and yelled, “The moon spirit is a gentle, loving lady. She rules the sky with _compassion_ and…and lunar goodness!”

Toph rolled her eyes.

“Maybe the ocean spirit got to her,” Zuko said. “You know, the ocean spirit that possessed Aang and drowned an entire fleet?”

“No, she wouldn’t let that happen,” Sokka said. “Yue knows better than to listen to strange ocean spirits.”

Had Sokka been dating Yue? Zuko really wasn’t sure, but it was seeming more and more likely.

Which meant that Zhao had sort of killed his girlfriend. Oof.

“Excuse me, sir,” Aang said, approaching a passerby. “Can you tell us anything about the spirit that’s been stealing people?”

The passerby told them about old man Ding, the only survivor the spirit had left. He glanced around, seeming nervous, and left quickly.

By late afternoon, they found Ding working on his house, up in the hills. Zuko and Sokka helped him lift a board up to be nailed in, and Sokka started asking him about the attack.

“Did you notice anything about the spirit that took you?” Aang asked.

“Didn’t see no spirit,” Ding said with a grunt. “Just felt something come over me, like I was possessed. Forced me to start walking toward the mountain.” He pointed at the peak. “I tried to fight it, but I couldn’t control my own limbs.” He shuddered.

“It just about had me into a cave up there,” he continued, “and I looked to the horizon, at the moon, for what I thought would be the last glimpse of light.”

Zuko shivered, remembering how he’d stared up at Agni when he had been drowning.

“But then the moon set! And I got control of myself again, and I just high-tailed it away from that mountain as quick as I could,” Ding said triumphantly.

“Why would a spirit want to take people to a mountain?” Sokka wondered.

“Oh, no!” Toph said. “I _did_ hear people screaming under the mountain that night. It wasn’t just Lee. The missing villagers must still be there.”

They stared up at the mountain as the twilight grew darker.

“We have to rescue them!” Sokka said.

“You young’uns go ahead,” Ding said. “I’ll be staying here tonight. I’ve had enough of spirits kidnapping me. Good luck, though.”

“Let’s get moving,” Aang said impatiently. “It’s almost dark.”

“Hold on. I’m going to go back to the inn,” Zuko said. “I don’t want to leave Hama and Katara alone.”

“They’re master waterbenders,” Aang said. “Don’t worry about them!”

Sokka nodded at Zuko. “Yeah, you’re right, Zuko. Whatever’s kidnapping people might go after them. They were planning to train by moonlight.”

“The rest of you should go after the villagers. Meet us back at the inn,” Zuko said. They took off running up the mountain, and he set out jogging as quickly as he could down toward the inn, going cross-country instead of following the trails they’d taken earlier.

It took him nearly an hour to get there. His ankle started to ache again, but he pushed the feeling away.

The inn was empty. Hama and Katara had already left for the night. They’d left bread and cheese out on the table, along with a note for the group to go ahead and eat dinner whenever they got back.

Zuko took deep breaths, slowing his heartbeat. _They’re nearby. Where would they train?_

Somewhere the moon would be able to shine on them at full strength. They’d hiked through a meadow on the way out.

He made his way through the trees by moonlight, sneaking closer. He had been right: Katara and Hama were training in the meadow.

He knelt behind a bush and watched through the leaves, listening carefully.

“The rats that scurried across the floor of my cage were nothing more than skins filled with liquid,” Hama said to Katara, no longer mumbling. She was loud enough for Zuko to easily understand; it made him wonder why she hadn’t been speaking that clearly the entire time. “I spent years developing the skill that led to my escape: bloodbending.”

_Bloodbending?_

There had been a reason the Fire Nation had targeted waterbenders. He’d read about it once, but it had seemed like a myth.

Katara looked alarmed, but not horrified. She hadn’t put the pieces together yet.

He jumped up, trying to burst out of the brush, but something caught his arms and legs. He tried to pull free, but they were held solid.

When he looked, there was nothing there.

_Oh, no._

Hama smiled at Katara, continuing her story. She glanced toward Zuko’s hiding spot casually, twitching her fingers.

Zuko’s arm dragged him backward, and his legs bent without his permission, keeping him out of Katara’s view.

“It’s you!” Katara realized, finally. “You’re the one who’s making people disappear during the full moon!”

 _Katara, run!_ Zuko thought. He tried to shout it, but his jaw was clamped shut.

Hama flung Katara back and forth like a ragdoll, slamming her into the ground and laughing.

Katara tried to fight back, rising to her feet, but Hama was stronger. She forced Katara against a dead tree, sucking the water out of every plant nearby, and walked up to her. Hama grabbed her throat – _no!_ – and squeezed until Katara was unconscious.

Zuko couldn’t move an inch. All he could do was watch.

Once Katara was knocked out, Hama summoned Zuko forward. His limbs jerked as she moved them against his will, forcing him to stand stiffly in front of her. She released his jaw.

“Coward!” he spat. “What sort of a person attacks innocent villagers who can’t fight back?”

“A firebender, calling me a coward?” Hama snapped. “ _None_ of the villagers I attacked were innocent or helpless. They were all firebenders, stealing the moon’s light and using it for their own purposes. I’ll get rid of them all, eventually. Then we will be free!”

 _Okay, no use arguing with her,_ Zuko decided. He tried to speak again, but his jaw was stuck.

Hama made him pick up Katara, manipulating him like a poorly-strung puppet. “Fool of a girl, getting involved with a firebender. She’s a traitor to her tribe. She might as well _be_ one of your kind.”

Try as he might, Zuko couldn’t break her grip as they marched up the mountain and into a cave.

 _Toph’s been here,_ he thought, pleased, as he saw the way the door had been broken through. _I hope they’re gone by now._

They were marched into an empty room, full of chains and handcuffs. Hama screamed in rage. “No! How could they escape?”

“Personally, I learned how to break my hand to get out of cuffs,” Zuko offered, finding that her grip on his jaw had loosened. “From there, you can just firebend your way free.”

His heartbeat spiked as she considered that. _Please, believe me. Don’t think about Toph and Aang and Sokka._

“I’ll be making sure that never happens again,” she said, finally. She chained Zuko to a pair of handcuffs too high for him; he had to stand on his toes to take the pressure off his wrists. There was no way he’d be able to get the momentum he’d need to break his hand again. (Part of him was relieved. _Coward._ )

She also chained his upper arms, and then his ankles. Katara was given a similar treatment, across the room from him, although her chains were long enough for her to slump to the ground.

“I’ll be back by tomorrow night,” Hama promised. “I need to _deal_ with those pesky villagers before they start blabbing about my identity.”

From the way she spoke, Zuko had no doubt that she meant to murder all of them.

She released her hold on him as she left. His bad ankle wobbled as it supported his weight.

“Katara,” Zuko said as soon as he was certain Hama was far out of earshot. “Katara! Wake up!”

She stirred slightly, but didn’t wake.

Zuko examined his chains. They were made of thick iron links, not easily breakable. He might be able to firebreath hot enough to melt through them, but firebreathing wasn’t as focused as other bending methods, and he would almost certainly get badly burned.

No leverage to break his hand. The ankle cuffs were tight enough that as long as his foot was attached to his leg, he wouldn’t be getting out of them.

“Argh!” he yelled, frustrated. His voice echoed in the cave. _Wait. Toph said she heard people screaming from here, the night I made it back to them. Maybe she’s still listening._

So Zuko screamed for Toph, Aang, and Sokka as loudly as he could. He threw in Appa, Momo, and Yue for good measure, screaming their names until his voice gave out.

He panted, bracing himself against the cave wall as his calves started to cramp from the strain.

Katara opened her eyes and sat up slowly. “Zuko?”

“Katara, it’s Hama. She’s the kidnapper. Sokka and the others got the other prisoners out before we got here,” Zuko said. “But she’s planning on killing the villagers tonight. We need to escape.”

She tried to crawl toward him, but was stopped by her chains. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t have one,” Zuko admitted. How could they fight a bloodbender? Katara had tried, and Aang was powerful, but he didn’t even know what he was facing.

Katara frowned. She closed her eyes and thought for a minute. “Okay. I have the start of one, at least. I can get us out.”

“How?”

“I need you to firebreath. If we sweat, I can bend it and cut through the chains.”

Zuko nodded. He took a breath and breathed fire into the room, getting it quite warm. For a non-firebender, it would probably be stiflingly hot, but Katara got up and started jogging in place, quickly working up a sweat.

Zuko couldn’t really _move_ , but he breathed fast, keeping his heart rate high.

Within a few minutes, he and Katara had sweated enough to form a decent amount of water. She gathered it and bent it back and forth between her hands, cutting through her chains a bit at a time. Once her arms were free, she had an easier time cutting the chains from her legs.

Completely freed, Katara sliced through Zuko’s chains in two smooth movements. He dropped to the ground, muscles burning, and pushed himself to his feet. “We need to find the others and run. She’s too powerful for us to fight.”

“No,” Katara said. “I understand now. There’s one way I can stop her.”

Zuko looked at her, uneasy, but followed her out of the cave and down the mountainside.

When they were nearly there, Zuko suddenly realized he could hear yelling from ahead. He exchanged a glance with Katara and ran faster. _They’re already fighting her!_

“Give up, Hama! You’re outnumbered. Tell us where Zuko and Katara are, now!” Aang was yelling.

Zuko grabbed Katara’s arm with one hand and a tree with the other, stopping them both in their tracks. “Quietly,” he signed. She nodded, and they crept toward the clearing.

“You’ve outnumbered yourselves,” Hama said.

“Let go of me!” Toph screamed, angry and more scared than Zuko had ever heard her.

“Whoa!” Aang yelled, and wind whipped through the clearing as he dodged Sokka. “Sokka!”

“It’s like my brain has a mind of its own! I’m sorry!” Sokka said, swinging wildly.

Hama watched, laughing to herself, and turned toward Aang.

“Go now,” Zuko signed, and Katara ran forward. Zuko crept along the edge of the clearing, heading for Sokka. _If I can pin him, I can get his sword and boomerang away._

“You’re not the only one who draws power from the moon, Hama,” Katara said, voice ringing. She pulled water from the plants and trees, withering them to husks, and stood ready to fight. “My bending is more powerful than yours.”

Hama met the challenge, bringing forth her own water and countering Katara’s wave. She managed to catch hold of Aang and made him run at Katara, who turned and froze him to a tree.

Zuko snuck closer, but Hama forced Sokka to the middle of the clearing. He watched from the shadows.

“Don’t hurt your friends, Katara,” Hama chided, grinning. “And don’t let them hurt each other!”

And then Sokka and Aang were flying at each other, Sokka’s sword pointed forward and ready to impale Aang.

“No!” Zuko shouted, running for Hama, but she grabbed him too, freezing him where he stood. Sokka was still flying forward, and–

Everything stopped.

Sokka and Aang dropped to the ground, unharmed, and Zuko could move again.

Katara’s shaky breathing was the loudest noise in the clearing. She advanced on Hama, forcing her to her knees with a flick of her wrists.

Hama smiled, even as she was pinned to the ground by her own veins.

Toph appeared behind Katara, leading a contingent of villagers. They cuffed Hama, and Katara dropped her control, not taking her eyes off the old woman.

“My work is done. Congratulations, Katara,” Hama said. “You’re a bloodbender.”

She laughed as they led her away. A couple of the villagers stayed behind.

As soon as she was around the corner, Katara dropped to her knees. She stared at her own hands, breath hitching, and started to cry.

Sokka and Aang hugged her. Toph grabbed one of her hands.

Zuko walked over to the remaining villagers, not caring how recognizable he was.

“She escaped prison the first time by bloodbending. Be careful,” he said. “We’ll leave town tonight, if it suits you.”

One of the villagers nodded. “Then I don’t think there’s any reason for the army to hear about your friend over there.”

“As long as she doesn’t go down Hama’s path,” another one said, giving Zuko a warning look.

“Trust me, she won’t,” Zuko said, nodding in agreement to the terms. The villagers left, following the others back toward the town.

He knelt in front of Katara and took her free hand. “You did good. You saved our lives.”

Katara shook her head. “I’m like her. I’m – I’m a _monster._ ”

“No,” Aang said. “You could never be like her!” That only made Katara cry harder.

 _Dammit, Aang,_ Zuko thought. “Katara, you have the ability to do what Hama did. But we all know you didn’t want to use it, and you won’t use it again unless it’s the most dire of circumstances, right?”

“I’m never doing that again,” she whispered. “It felt so _wrong._ ”

“Then never do it again,” Sokka said, giving Zuko a grateful look. “Never teach anyone how to do it. Never even mention it again, if you want. And, you know, don’t become an old innkeeper who secretly terrorizes local villagers by kidnapping them on full moons. I know that’s been your lifelong goal, sorry about that.”

That got a giggle out of her, and she relaxed a bit, although she was still crying. “Thanks, Sokka.”

“I’m going to go grab our things so that we can leave,” Zuko said. “Toph, could you come help?”

“Sure, sparky,” Toph said. “Back in a bit, sugar queen.”

They went back into the inn and quickly packed everything they needed. Zuko took as much food as he could carry from the kitchen. _Only a week and a half until the eclipse, but we may as well eat good food while we can,_ he thought.

Once they had packed everything and found Appa (who had been hidden in the barn, eating his weight in hay) they all climbed into the saddle. Aang took his place at Appa’s head, and they took off.

Although it was a mild night, they huddled together in the saddle as they flew, and none of them slept until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally supposed to be home to Zuko telling a Fire Nation Horror Story, but his runaway thing nixed it. It’ll pop up later.
> 
> For clarity: I’m not saying that Zuko and Katara dating would be creepy because of the two-year age gap. Zuko was just scrambling for a reason to give Sokka for not wanting to date Katara, and he found one that worked.


End file.
